


The Other Side of the City

by Illusionna



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Aliens, Gen, Love, Love interest - Freeform, Mutants, Other, Splinter love, Turtles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 152
Words: 390,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3920023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illusionna/pseuds/Illusionna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are so many mutants in TMNT2012 whose stories will never be told.  This is one of them, both before and after the Turtle madness came on the scene in NYC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A/N: There are so many off screen mutants in TMNT, that I wanted to tell some of their stories, therefore there are not Turtles or Turtle friends in this story (yet).

The night had gone splendidly, even if she did say so herself. To be able to do a poetry reading at The Brewery Poetry Club in New York City was like a dream come true. They had called her, asked her, to come and read! It was the first time she'd not booked herself somewhere, the first time that she'd been sought out. The buzz of the evening, and maybe even the champagne, still tingled at the ends of her limbs, at the tips of her ears. The sparkles in her navy blue velvet gown twinkled like stars in the light of the subway train. 

Stephane would kill her when she got home, but she didn't care at the moment. The smile on her face made her cheeks hurt. She had passed a little boutique on 5th Avenue and seen the gown in the window. She had stopped at stared at it, like a kid in a candy store. Put it on, she told herself, glancing at her watch. You have three hours until you have to be there. The woman in the store eyed her warily when she asked to try the gown on, but when she had, it was perfect. She'd looked perfect in it. So she bought it, having to use her credit card. It would take her three months of her part time salary as a gymnastics and yoga instructor to pay it off, but she would. That is what she'd tell Stephane when she got home to him, she'd pay it all with her own money. Of course, that argument might not work since it was 'their' money and not 'her' money. Funny thing how that happens when one gets married. Maybe telling him how fabulous the night had been would allay some of his wrath. There was, always, if she had to use them, her feminine wiles.

She had two stops on her way to the train all the way back to Connecticut. She laughed out loud, "My feminine wiles," she muttered. She was small, light, and lean, with her pale skin looking porcelain against the navy velvet of her gown. Her auburn hair looked especially dark drawn up in a bun, tendrils curling down to show off a long, elegant, pale neck to the passengers of the subway car. Her expressive, dark green eyes did not tend to show off a sexiness that would be characterized as wily, but rather a wide-eyed wonder at the world around her. A wonder that made her an excellent poet, and that got her booked at The Brewery Poetry Club.

She bounced a little at the door of the car as it pulled into the station. Nervous energy coursed through her, and the excited tingling began to include her solar plexus as well as her limbs and ears. Waiting on the other side of the door were two men, obviously identical twins, in smart dark suits, each holding an identical briefcase, each having a blank expression on their faces. It struck her as odd, but she shrugged it off, I'd have a pretty blank face too if I was coming home from work at this hour. She glanced at her watch, more of a bracelet with a timepiece on it, and it said 1:23 am. 

Don't get off the train, the unbidden thought popped into her head. The excited tingling in her body began to change in a charged fear in her chest. Don't get off the train, the unbidden thought said again. It came from the same place that told her not to go on that date with Greg Foreman in high school. He was convicted of date rape only six months later. It came from the place that told her that if she had the guts to put her hand in the knothole of that old tree, she'd be grateful. The old locket she'd found there, and then returned to the police, garnered her a $4000 reward, which paid for she and Stephane's honeymoon to Haiti. It came from the same place that the poetry came from, whispering in her ears secrets that she could hear, write down in cadence, if she only chose to listen. Don't get off the train, the unbidden thought was loud, so loud, she moved away from the door and sat down once again. 

The two men came on when the door opened, both still blank faced. Her gut twisted, and she was quite sure it was not the champagne. She stood up, her legs feeling weak, and walked toward the end of the car, opened the door, and entered the next one. A glance behind her saw the two men had stood up, and were walking toward the adjacent car. She sped up her steps, her high heels making it hard to take a normal step forward, so she was forced to pump her legs like a toddler in little steps. She went through the next car, where a woman in a worn cardigan and pants looked up at her briefly, and then back out the window. The men in suits were still behind her. She went in the next car, empty of passengers, only to find it was the last, and the last door was an emergency exit. The tracks, illuminated for a moment from the tail lights of the train, sped away at an unfathomable speed. 

She twirled around, the skirt of her dress swirling lightly with the movement, to see the two men come in the door, and it close automatically behind them. 

"The one known as Phoebe Laferriere will come with Kraang from this place to the place she is not yet," one of them said, advancing toward her.

The ridiculous way in which he spoke threw her off guard. This must be some sort of joke, she thought. But the fear in her gut didn't subside. "What?" it came out like a manic laugh. The men did not answer her, but the one who had previously spoken continued toward her. When he grabbed her arm, she knew this was no joke. A ,bolt of pain from the grip stabbed down to her hand, she'd never felt a grip this before. He pulled her toward him like she was weighed no more than paper.

The fear in her gut went away, all the thought in her head went away. You have to get away from this man, the unbidden thought told her. She lifted her leg in a hard kick, using all the force of her strong gymnast thighs, and her shin collided with the man's crotch. Pain ricocheted through her leg, and she let out a loud cry. The man didn't even flinch, and his arm stayed outstretched, her own upper arm firm in his grip. She tried to twist away from, but his arm didn't budge. She placed her other hand on his outstretched upper arm, if she could use it has a bar, she could volt out of his grip. Jumping off of the floor, using her hand to push on the man's arm, she lifted herself in the air into a twisting volt, and hurled through the air. I am not going in the right direction, she thought errantly as the wall of the car came closer to her face. She realized that she hadn't volted out of his grip. He had thrown her. Then the pain of the wall hit her, and everything went black.

***

When Phoebe came to, she was lying on a smooth, cold floor. Her temples burned and her shoulders and hips ached. She had a vague recollection of being strapped to a table, of electrodes being placed on her, of a searing pain bearing through her.

She opened her eyes slowly, and got a sense of vertigo. She could see through the floor, down to another floor made of gray metal sheets bolted together. She closed her eyes again, her temples hurt. She touched them gently, and felt the soft bubble of a blister. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, and decided to open her eyes ahead of her.

She blinked. This can't be happening, she thought. All around her, at different level, were floating transparent cells. Each one contained a thing. That was the only way her brain would describe it. Things. Things everywhere. In the cell across from her was a giant lizard, but the lizard had arms and legs like a human being. Another looked like a cross between a man and a bird. His neck was elongated, and his nose was a grotesque imitation of a beak. His legs were skinny, with claws at the feet. Another on held what looked like a werewolf, an insect of some kind with a human mouth and one human arm and hand. There were so many of them, and they were all over the room. Flying among them, on a kind of personal strange space ship, were brain-like things with eyes and tentacles. She looked down again, and saw bodies, transparent themselves, with the brain-like creatures in their bellies. This can't be happening, she moaned her head. I have fallen asleep somewhere and am having an awful nightmare. I am still at the poetry reading, and I have too much to drink. Someone has put a drug in my drink and I am having some sort of bad trip...the excuses faded away as one of the brains cruised toward her cell.

She crammed herself to the far side of the glass-like canister, but the spaceship riding brain passed her cell by and stopped in front of the lizard man's. As she watched them, she thought that the lizard might have been an iguana, or a gila monster, something wide and powerfully muscled. It let out a high pitched roar, and sails came up on the back of its head, bright red and shaking. 

The spaceship riding brain reached out a tentacle and pressed a button on the lizard man's cell. It slowly began to descend toward the ground, a group of the body riding brains gathering around where it would land. The sides disappeared, and all that was left was a round, glass like disc on the floor. The body riding brains were aiming guns at the lizard man, and two of them had long poles that looked like antennae. The lizard man let out another high pitched roar, and one of the poles buzzed with an electric current that visibly transversed the lizard man.

He let out another roar, his sails set out huge around his head, and grabbed the closest body riding brain he could reach. He threw it , and it crashed against the wall. The body riding brains converged on the lizard man, but he flung one of his great human-like arms and set several flying from him. He jumped down from his disc, grabbed a body riding brain, and body slammed it into some sort of console in the middle of the room.

Suddenly the walls to Phoebe's cell disappeared, and the disc began to fall. Her stomach traveled into her throat, and the breath was knocked out of her when she hit the floor. She heard cries of all different kinds of animals, and she heard words, English words, coming from voice that sounded as if they shouldn't speak. A 'spew' flew by her head, and she snapped her eyes open. Pink beams of light streaked by, hitting the ground around her with soft 'thhh's. She crawled along the floor, her legs slipping behind her as they slid on the material of her dress. She finally got a foot hold, hoisted herself up off of the floor, and ran to the door that all of the other things were running toward. They were passing her in what seemed like herds. She kept her eyes on the door, half running half crawling, and then tumbled over something.

Looking down, she saw a group of the things beneath her. She screamed, and edged away from them, landing on her rear-end. They were small, very small, and she was suddenly aware they were all crying plaintively. Then it hit her--they were children!

The lizard man was in what seemed to be a loosing battle. Phoebe looked to the door, then looked at the things near her. She looked into the eyes of one that was a mixture of a human and a gray tabby cat. It cried, it's mouth opening to show kitten milk teeth.

She scrambled toward them, and scooped up the cat. It jumped nimbly on her back, and when it did so, she was assailed by the others. A bear followed the cat onto her back, which caused the cat to move to her shoulders. A goat, or a sheep began to try to climb also, but she managed to stop it, and tuck it under one of her arms. A tiny snake wound its way around her forearm, and she felt a searing pain and the wetness of a burst blister. A bird was the last one, it seemed unable to stand, and she scooped it up and tucked it to her chest with the arm that the snake clung to. Then she ran for the door.

The door lead to a hallway--an normal looking hallway. The things were all around, crashing into the walls, and breaking down doors. One of the doors was torn off of its hinges by the human-insect hybrid, and it disappeared inside. When Phoebe reached the doorway, she saw stairs leading downward.

She flew down the stairs. They seemed to go on forever. The insect man had disappeared, and several other things passed her on her down. She wasn't sure how she didn't trip sooner, but she finally did, and her and all the little things clinging to her rolled down the flight of stairs, and landed in the lobby of a building.

She landed on her hip, the little bird thing underneath her. It let out a 'awww' weak and pitiful, but it only hit the periphery of her ears. She hoisted herself up, ignored the pain in her hip, and the burning in her arm, and at her temples, and ran out of the front door, broken open by some creature that escaped with her.

Her legs began to shake with her running, her chest heaved. She made herself go onward, the farther she got from the building, the less animal sounds from the other things she heard. She was vaguely aware she was in the business district of a city, skyscrapers with fancy logos, their windows darkened in the night sped by as she ran. Finally, her chest would not allow her to run any longer, and she ducked into an alleyway between two buildings, and sank down against a wall at the end of it. 

The cat began to cry again, a high pitched little sound like a kitten mewing for its mother. The others all began to join it, and Phoebe felt panic rising in her again. 

"Shhh," she hissed, "shush, you have to be quiet!" It didn't seem to do any good, they all kept making noises, a cacophane of sound in the silent darkness. "Shhhhh," spit flew from her mouth as she made the sound. The cat, mewing in her ear, was loud and incessant. She let go of the lamb, and reached up to grab the cat. "Shush," she whispered, and pressed the cat's face into her chest to muffle its cries. The bird in her other arm awwked, and she desperately grabbed its beak and clamped it shut with her hand, leaving its body in her lap.

This seemed to quiet the other three, as soon as the cat and bird stopped, so did they. "You have to be quiet," Phoebe whispered, "or they will find us." She let the cat up slightly, and sighed when it didn't cry. Letting go of the bird's beak, it awwked again, and she clamped her hand back closed.

The only sound in the night air now was their breathing, six heavy rasps catching their breath. The cat put its arms around her torso, and the bear had done the same thing to her back. The lamb came up beside her, pushing the cat into the bird, and sat on her now free leg. The snake stayed wrapped tightly around her forearm. She lowered her head, the smell of animal overwhelming her and she closed her eyes.

The sounds of their breathing slowed, but no more cries came from the things. She kept her head lowered, she wasn't sure how long, until she heard the sound of walking on the sidewalk along the front of the alley. 

She snapped her head up, and held her breath. A woman in a business suit, with high heels and briefcase, clicked-clacked across the front of the alleyway, disappearing as she walk on. Pheobe could see her clearly, she could see the alley clearly. The sky was a gray blue, and the stars of the night were no longer visible.

It was morning, and people were on their way to work. She was stuck in an alleyway, in a torn party dress, with five wierd mutated animal people clinging to her, and people were going to begin walking by at any minute. If someone saw her, they would all the authorities. If they called the authorities, one of two things would happen. They would take her to the loony bin for the story she told, or the brain things would find her. Neither option was acceptable.

She looked around desperately, and saw that the wall she was leaning against had a chain link gate on the far end of it. She gently placed the cat, bear, and lamb on the ground, and stood up, gasping at the pain in her hip. She limped to the gate, the bird in her hand, the snake wound about her forearm, and saw it was locked.

"We have to go over it," she said softly. The other three mutated animal people followed her, like a line of ducklings. She pointed to the gate, "We have to go over it," she said again.

None of them moved.

"Over," she said again, placing her free hand on the chain link, and hoisting herself up. 

The cat seemed to understand immediately, and sprang onto the gate, scrambled up it, and was over like a flash. The bear followed her, albeit more slowly and much more loudly. The lamb had a good deal of trouble, his feet were like foot-hooves, and his hands didn't bend much. She thought at first she'd vault over the fence, but the pain in her hip reminded her she was not going to do that. She hoisted herself up with her free hand, still holding the bird, and helped the lamb up the fence with her shoulder. Both she and lamb fell onto the side.

Phoebe limped along the alley, turning and twisting,and avoiding anymore climbing, until she found a small alcove off the back of a building. Crates of goods were in front of it, blocking it from view from the street. She crawled into it, the other following, and she fell to the floor. No sooner had she closed her eyes, then she fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: There are so many off screen mutants in TMNT2012, that I wanted to explore some of them. Therefore, there are no Turtle or Turtle friends in the story (yet)

The smell of food wafted through the air and woke the small group of escapees. The bear's stomach rumbled audibly, followed quickly by Phoebe. The cat mewed, bringing Phoebe fully awake. "Shhh," she rubbed its head. "I know you're hungry." How was she supposed to feed them? Her purse was gone, along with all of her money, her identification, her credit card. Plus, she looked like she had just come out of a fire or a car wreck. 

She looked around, peeking her head around the alcove. No one was there, so she stood up, and ignoring the ache in her hip, limped out into the alley. The three mutants followed her, the snake still on her arm, and the bird still held close to her chest. Weaving their way in and out behind buildings, the smell of Italian food became stronger and stronger. Around a corner, she saw the back of an Italian eatery. Outside the back door where heaps of half-eaten sandwiches, plates of unfinished pasta, piles of salad. She stopped, and felt the bear hit her legs. It looked up at her, about to make a sound, when she bent down and put her hand over its muzzle. "Shhhh," she said gently. "I will get us some food," she explained. "Stay here."

She went to make her way toward the door, and the three little ones followed her. "No," she shook her head, "you stay here." But when she moved again, they followed her. 

She sighed, and looked at the discarded food behind the restaurant. "We have to run," she said quietly. Is this how homeless people got food? They ran behind Italian eateries and grabbed leftovers? She began to ran, and then remembered her hip with a stab of pain, so her running was more like hopping. She grabbed a bowlful of the discarded food, and fled around the other corner of the building. Looking behind her, the three little mutants were gone.

She let out an cry, and saw they were at the refuse, gobbling up anything they could find. If someone saw them, they'd call the police. She put down the bird, and ran to the other three. She nabbed up the cat and the lamb, and ran back behind the corner. She dropped them, and turned to go back for the bear, but he was already behind her. She sighed, and picked up the bird again. "Come on," she walked farther down this little alley, we'll eat."

She dropped the food, and the three mutants fell on it. She felt the pressure release on her forearm, giving her pins and needles, as the snake let go of her and fell in the large Styrofoam bowl. Phoebe stuffed her own hand in the bowl, grabbed a handful of slimy something, an stuffed it into her mouth. It tasted like a combination of spaghetti and olives. She put her hand in again, and sat down, putting the bird in her lap. 

She took some small pieces and placed them in its beak, but it didn't seem to know what to do with them. It knew it was food, it opened his beak wide and let out a weak "Awwk." When she put a piece of noodle in its mouth, it just held its beak open. 

She glanced up at the others, and they all seemed to be find stuffing their faces hand over fist. She looked back at the bird, and thought, Why won't you eat? She finished chewing the last of the food in her mouth and swallowed. "Oh!" She reached through the other four and grabbed another handful of food. She stuffed it into her own mouth and chewed it, and spit it into the birds beak.

The bird swallowed.

As she continued with the procedure, occasionally getting up to stealthily, or as stealthily as she could in a ruined party dress and barefoot, grab some more food before disappearing again behind the corner, it occurred to her that might be in some sort of twisted cartoon or comic book. Taking care of five human-animal children, running away from spaceship riding and body wearing brains, digging out the garbage for food, none of this could be real. She spit some more food into the bird's mouth.

A plastic cup was nearby, so she gently put down the bird, retrieved it, and filled it with water out of an outdoor spigot. She gulped it down, ignoring the awful taste. She did it again, and again, and then she was surrounded by mews, and baws, and brrws, and a pressure coiling against her leg. The other four had figured out what she was doing, and come for their share.

She filled the cup, and held it for each of them as they drank. They tried to take it from her, and each other, but she had plenty of practice with that kind of behavior. Her own two children, only two years apart in age, had gone through a stage where they did this with everything. Mediating through sharing was something she was very good at.

She took a cup back to the bird, picked it up again, and tried to get it to drink. Again, it did the same as it did with the food, only opened its beak, and tried to swallow.

Now that she had a moment to think, she could get a good look at each of the creatures that was with her. 

The bird in her arms was white, with feathers sticking out in a sickly fashion. It looked much more bird than it did human, its eyes were wide and held no expression. Its wings were thin and at the ends of them fingers protruded, with out a hand. Its legs were scaly like a bird's, but the knees looked human, and the feet were malformed, with seven long toes on each them, ending with small, white talons. Its heart was beating very fast, and it was blinking quickly with its expressionless eyes.

The snake was tiny, it couldn't have been more than a foot long. It was a dark green, with amber eyes. The only real thing that reminded Phoebe of a human were the little neck, shoulders, and arms They were perfectly formed, and the same dark green as the rest of it. It slithered with its head up, to what Phoebe might have said as its waist, but she couldn't be sure, as under the arms it was all the same. 

The bear seemed to blend beautifully with its combination of animal and human. On all fours, it looked like a bear cub. But when it stood up on two legs, its arms fell to its sides like a human beings, and it moved its front paws like a hand. Standing up on two legs also made it quite clear that it was a he. 

Same with the lamb. She thought it was a sheep and not a goat at least, but she could have been wrong. It was obviously a boy, and covered with white wool. His eyes were brown, with hourglass shaped pupils. He did not look as lamb-like on all fours as the bear did a bear, but when he stood up, he stood like a human. His feet were a human foot shaped hoof with two toes on the end. His hands were like a human's, with thick fingers, and covered in the same white wool as the rest of him.

The cat was the most human-like of all of them. One could almost trick oneself into thinking it was a child in a cat suit. Phoebe couldn't tell the gender of it by looking. Its body was covered in sleek gray fur, with the darker markings of a tabby. Its tummy were white. So were its paws, which had elongated digits it could use as fingers. Its eyes were green, its pupils slits in the daylight. Its tail swished back and forth in a rhythmic motion, and she could hear a faint purr coming from her. 

"Can any of you talk?" she asked.

They all looked at her and said nothing.

"I am going to guess that is a no," she sighed. "Well, I can't be calling you the bear, the lamb, the snake, and the cat, so we better come with names. Unless you all have names already."

She waited a moment for an answer, but didn't get one.

"OK, then," Phoebe looked at each of them. "You," she pointed to the bear, "are Arcos." She pointed to the lamb, "You are Aries." She took a deep breath. "You other three aren't so easy." After a moment, she said, "I will assume you're girls until I know otherwise." She looked to the snake, "You are Medusa." To the cat she said, "You are Ailurosa." She looked down at the bird, "And you are..." she searched her brain for her Greek Mythology, , and unable to find a girl's name, she decided, "you are Aetos." She pointed to herself, "I am Phoebe." She stood up, "and we have to get out of here before someone sees us."

She and the little mutants behind her wandered around the back ways of the buildings for hours. Medusa ended up on her forearm again, and she carried the other three with her free arm at intervals, the other arm kept Aetos close to her chest. In the time walking, she had plenty of time to think. She had to contact Stephane. He must be worried sick, the kids must be terrified. She would have to find a payphone and call him collect. What would she do with these little people, for she was quite sure now they were in fact people. Would she hide them in her basement forever? Or the attic? She imagined what she would say when Stephane picked up. "Allo? Stephane? C'est Phoebe. Je suis a New York et je ne peux pas aller a la maison, parsque je ne portais sauf ma robe." Looking down at her dress, she saw it was filthy, and so were her legs. Her bare feet were black, and crusted with gook. The dress was torn at the hem around her knees, The blisters on her arms, legs, and temples had burst, scabbing over and leaving puss on the dark blue velvet. She chuckled and shook her head at the absurdity of it. 

She noticed as they walked that the garbage bins were less full of garbage, and the ground less full of refuse. There were more needles and razors and condoms on the ground. When she heard no human sounds for half an hour, she ventured to take a look at the street.

It was empty. It looked like they were in a warehouse district, abandoned for more modern facilities. The sun was low in the sky, so Phoebe picked a warehouse to stay the night.

The first floor was obviously occasionally occupied, having a metal bin the middle for a fire in the winter, and strewn clothes, wrappers, and human waste decomposing spread about. The second and third floors looked occupied too, drug paraphernalia and other things she didn't even recognize littered the floor. She decided the top floor would probably be the safest, and trekked up the stairs, her little brood of mutants following her. As the sun set over the horizon, slowly blanketing everything in black, Phoebe leaned up against a wall once more, and with the little ones around her fell asleep. 

***  
Phoebe awoke feeling a cold, hard thing against her chest. She opened her eyes, knowing what it was before she saw it. Aetos' fluttering heartbeat had become intimately familiar to her in the past two days, and now it had stopped.

The bird's eyes were still open, and its body was rigid, its white, sparsely feathered head beginning to crane back with rigor mortise. "Oh," she cooed, and her voice woke the others up. They each sniffed Aetos' body, as if in a goodbye, and then ignored it.

She got up, and laid the bird down. She wished she had some other way to dispose of him, but she had to find a payphone, she had to do it stealthily, and she couldn't waste time here. Leading the other four down the stairs, they began their trek through the empty streets in search of a phone. 

They found one on a corner not far from the warehouse. Don't call, came the unbidden thought. Don't call. She picked up the receiver, and heard nothing from the earpiece. It was dead. The second one they found, however, wasn't. Don't call, said the unbidden thought, you ought not to call. You shouldn't call, don't call. She pressed 0 for the operator, all four mutants clinging to her legs. She fervently hoped not to be seen. 

"Hello," came a nasally, female voice onto the phone, "how may I help you?"

"I would like to make a collect call, please," Phoebe told her.

"What number, please?"

Phoebe gave it to her and the phone on the other end rang. "Oh, please be home, Stephane, please be home."

She heard a click, and then expecting the answering machine to come, she looked frantically around the phone looking for a phone number for Stephane to call her back.

"We appreciate you calling," said a voice that Phoebe didn't recognize, "but the Laferrier family is not making any comments at this time. This has been a harrowing time for this family, the loss of this beloved wife and mother has devastated not only one community but two. The funeral is taking place in Mr. Laferrier's homeland in Haiti in an undisclosed location. Donations can be made to the Missing Person's Fund in lieu of flowers. All calls will be screened, and those that are deemed relevant will be passed along to the Laferrier family. They ask that their privacy be respected at this time as they mourn this loss."

As Phoebe listened to the message coming from her own answering machine, her mind raced. Harrowing time? How long had she been gone? Funeral? They were having a funeral for her after three days? Haiti? He was going back to Haiti!? With the kids? With her kids?! She looked down at creatures clinging to her legs, and saw four pairs of pleading, frightened eyes looking up at her. They were different colors, and different shape, with different shaped pupils, but they were eyes, and they were full of expression. They were full consciousness. In Haiti, the unbidden thought said, in Haiti. In Haiti the Stephane at the kids had their grandmother, their many aunts, and uncles, and cousins of all types within a five mile radius of each other. Stephane could live like a king in Haiti with his education. Her children would be well loved, Stephane would be well loved. The four being clinging to her had no one. You, the unbidden thought said from the place that the poetry came. She took the phone away from her ear, and heard the beep of the machine. She hung up.

It was like something had fallen away from her, a crust from her eyes that made the world look different. As if she'd been looking at it all of her life with glasses and now they were off and she could see the colors were not the same shades she thought. The lack of sound made her feel removed from her body, the warmth of the mutants on her legs felt faraway. She began walking, shaking them off gently, except for Medusa, who wound around her leg and clung tightly.

She returned to the alleys behind the buildings until she found a restaurant, and repeated yesterday's episode, her mind blank. She saw a newspaper on the ground and picked it up. The date read August 30, 1993. August? If this was today's newspaper, it meant that Phoebe had been gone for four months. How could that be, she'd only been gone a few days, at most. Why would they have her funeral after only 4 months? She remembered then reading a newspaper article once that after three days the probability of finding a missing person dropped 75%. How much did it drop after 4 months? Was it almost nothing, enough to have a funeral? 

After eating, they walked back to the warehouse and climbed once more to the top floor. Aetos was still there, flies now crawling on his open eyes and open beak. She shooed them away and picked up the little bird.

This morning she had noticed a fenced in vacant lot next to the building. It was small, perhaps 8 feet by 10 feet, but it was overgrown with weeds. She carried the little body down the stairs, and next door, she squeezed through the gate, which was rusted into position barely open. It had been covered with concrete at one time, but the plants were slowly taking it back. Chunks of concrete were cracking up, and she saw in the back left corner, a large, green weed was growing. She carried Aetos over to it, and put him down.

She pulled the weed up, it was resistant, but she was determined. It left a bare space of earth, and the concrete loose. She began prying the concrete chunks, the four little ones following suit. Medusa looked especially silly, with her tiny arms and hands being able to only pick up a pebble and move it to the side. Once there was a space wide enough, Phoebe found a broken glass bottle and started to dig with it.

The four mutants watched her for a while, as if they were examining her, waiting for something to happen. Then Arcos began to dig with his hands, his claws removing great clods of dirt as the bear dug. Soon they had shallow hole large enough to place Aetos' body in. She laid him in the hole, and began to move the dirt over his body with her hands. All of the others joined to help her. "I'm sorry, little fellow," she said. "I wish I could have done better." 

With those words, the world snapped back into place, and her thoughts came back to her. She had to figure out what she was going to do, how she was going to do it, and what she was going to do it with. She was not going to loose another one of these little ones, and she hadn't the foggiest idea of how to take care of them. Or herself. She looked up at the warehouse, a window on the top floor slightly ajar overlooking the lot. She had to start somewhere, so she'd start with the top floor of the warehouse, and with this vacant lot which was now a graveyard.


	3. Chapter 3

Days turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years, and Phoebe and her children fell into a easy rhythm with their days.

At first, most of each day was spent "shopping", diving through dumpsters and trash heaps for usable items and food. Phoebe was amazed at what people threw away. It took longer to clean the top floor of the warehouse than it did to find the furnishings for it. The found a table, chairs, a desk, a couch (which was a doozy to get home), a television set, mattresses, beds, blankets, sheets, anything one would need to make a house a home. Granted it was dirty, and smelled, and none of it matched, but it was all unbroken. She even found a bookcase, made of solid wood. Aries, she found out, was a strong little lamb, and with Arcos' and Ailurosa's help, she was able to get and the couch back to warehouse.

Food, on the other hand, was no so simple to find. Well, it was simple, but it took more work. The closest eatery was quite a ways away, and she found she couldn't feed the five of them on just that dumpster alone. They shopped in many, plastic grocery bags were around aplenty, and the five of them loaded up for a few days worth of food each trip.

The best find, however, in Phoebe's opinion, was the dumpster behind a bookstore. It was filled with books. She couldn't believe that bookstores threw away books! Each of the covers was torn off the front, but she didn't care. She brought armloads of them home whenever they were close by, and read through them voraciously. Books about flowers, books about robots, books about plumbing, books about motorcycles, books with love stories, books with hate stories, books with serious stories, and books with short stories.

The diamond, though, which could be found anywhere, like buried treasure on a deserted island, was a notebook with blank pages in which she could write poetry. The next best thing was a notebook written in pencil, but finding erasers to empty the pages was another matter altogether.

Slowly, the four of them pulled up the concrete in the adjacent lot, piling it in the corner. When the boys got older, they would heft it over the far side of the fence, until the pile dwindled to nothing. Then they tried to throw each other over. That only happened once before Phoebe put a stop to that with a hard tweak on their ears and a day spent in their bedrooms with no entertainment. She filled the lot with plants and flowers and vegetables. She wasn't a very good gardener, and it took her several tries to grow almost anything she tried to plant. When she saw a plant she wanted, she would take a cutting from it and carry it home, making sure to explain to the children that it was not stealing, because the plant would grow itself back, and she was only taking a small piece of it. It was a stretch of the truth, but she brushed the occasional twinge of guilt away when she planted it. She used English ivy along the chain link fence to block out the view from the street. In the place where she had buried Aetos she planted a juniper bush. She thought that the berries might attract birds, and she felt that was an appropriate memorial.

Medicine was another item that she had a difficult time finding. The bookstore frequently threw away books on herbs, and she amassed quite a collection. Luckily for her, most of the medicinal herbs that were indicated were weeds, and easy to transplant entire plants into the garden. She used them on a regular basis when the four were little, healing cuts and bruises, and colds and headaches. They tasted atrocious, but they worked.

They would watch one of the six stations that they got on the bunny ears of their little television. They watched Sesame Street, Barney, Touring New York with Sidney Mayer, and Painting With Bob Ross. Arcos, as he grew older, became quite the painter, and painted anything that Bob Ross did on his show, using old canvases that were already painted and layering them with white paint to make them bare again. He ended up with quite an array of paints, as it seemed artists were not so careful to empty the tubes before throwing them away, along with quite an array of paintings. When the analogue switch-off happened in 2009, they went without television for 21 months, until they found a digital converter in the back of an electronics store.

Phoebe threw herself into Ailurosa, Arcos, Aries, and Medusa. As they grew, she began to think of them, not as all the same age, but stepping stones. Ailurosa seemed to be the oldest, with Arcos next, Aries after him, and Medusa the youngest. She didn't know if this was true or not, and of course they didn't either, but that is how she thought about it. When they were very small, it was easy to take up entire weeks without thinking of anything but their immediate needs. She taught them to read, and to write, and to speak politely and clearly. She read them picture books with no covers, and adult books with no covers, and her poetry. She made up stories just for them, having adventures among imagined foes. When she could, she practiced yoga, and some gymnastics, using the piping at the ceiling for uneven bars. Ailurosa would follow her about, twirling and flying through the air in a way that Phoebe could have only hoped for, even at her best when she on the college gymnastics team. She meditated a lot, especially quiet of the night when she couldn't sleep.

She had to be careful of what kind of books she read. When she read mysteries or horror, she would have nightmares of the spaceship riding brains, and the robot wearing brains and being burned at her temples. When she read science fiction or fantasy, she would have strange dreams involving the children and awful monsters chasing them. When she read romance novels, she would dream of Stephane, or an old boyfriend, or some made up man conjured up from her subconscious, and wake up aching between her legs, and with a dire need for a cold shower. It did her no good to indulge in the need by herself, for it only reminded her of how she had greatly enjoyed practicing the conception of her two birth children, and how Stephane had been particularly good at it. She stopped reading novels altogether, and eventually the need in the middle of night did not return, and she was both glad and sad of it. 

Any of these times when she woke up, she would sit up, cross her legs, and meditate as she'd been taught by her yoga instructor in college. She had resented it when she first learned how to do it, being sent by her gymnastics coach for a cure for her hurting torso and shin splints. Many of the moves were the same, save that yoga was much, much slower. She preferred the bursts of speed of gymnastics, the sweat and the burn of her muscles. She was grateful for it now. It gave her a way to calm down, and sometimes she the unbidden thoughts would speak to her, and on those nights, she considered herself lucky.

Being stuck to only non-fiction books became quite a book, though. She managed to fix the plumbing in the building enough to make the toilets flush and the sinks work. The workman's shower, a tiny thing in the bathroom of the top floor, worked too, but they were loathe to use it, as it had no hot water. I could have used this when I was reading those romance novels, she thought more than once in those early years.

Once she got the plumbing working, vagrants started showing up in more frequent numbers to the warehouse. The children then began playing a game, to which Phoebe turned a blind eye. She tried very hard to teach them kindness, kindness whenever they could, but she couldn't risk them being discovered. The children called the game "Ghost", and were soon very good at it. The boys would make very convincing wooing and whispering noises, and the girls would run and slide in the shadows, shushing and whooshing. It soon became common knowledge that the warehouse was haunted, and soon no one else came to it. The children then extended their game to the neighboring warehouses, until their block was devoid of people and apparently full of demons.

To make up for her guilt at Ghost, she tried to help the homeless people she met with her herbal medicines. She became quite proficient at diagnosing people, and when she was lucky, the unbidden thought would tell her what was the matter. She would give her herbs freely to the men and women they passed, leaving her children in the shadows, and returning to them once she'd administered to them. She helped to heal infections mainly, and headaches, and chest colds. The chest colds were the hardest, because she had to keep returning to the patient with a new batch of herbs.

So the years by, and her children grew. When she passed the mirror in their living room, she saw that the furrow in between her eyes that showed when she was upset, or angry, or squinting did not go away when she relaxed her eyes. The lines on her cheeks were a little deeper and lower when she smiled, extending closer to the corners of her lips with every passing year. Her hair, beginning at the temples, began to turn from its auburn to a honey blond. When she noticed, she would run her fingers though it, now extending to her waist in waves, and say to herself, "You're lucky, Phoebe. It could be turning gray." 

***

Nine years had gone by, sometimes in a blur, sometimes painfully slow, depending on the stage of development the four mutants were experiencing. At the moment, they were all in equilibrium, and Phoebe enjoyed a pleasant flow of the days while they lasted.

They began their shopping trips in the dark, at that time of night when the temperature is lowest just before dawn. As the sky began to turn gray, then orange, then blue, they rummaged through the their preferred dumps before returning home as the sun poked its head over the horizon.

They were returning with their arms laden with food and books, turning the corner to the street that held the warehouse when a soft sound came from a shadow in between two buildings. Phoebe froze, not recognizing it as a familiar one. Her heart thumped in her chest, and visions of her nightmares with brains came rushing into her mind.

"Hello, little pretty," said a low voice from the shadows. "I have been waiting for you to come home."

She blinked. He spoke with an accent, and accent she would have recognized anywhere. "Vous etez de Haiti," she said quietly.

She heard a slight intake of breath come from the shadow, and then a moment's pause. "Oui," he replied, "mais vous n'etez pas." Phoebe didn't answer him, well aware that her own accent was easily identifiable as American by anyone who spoke French proficiently. "I have seen you help people," he said, "with your garden."

He'd seen her? He'd seen her garden? She thought she had been careful. She was positive she'd been careful. What happened to the block being infested with demons, and keeping the vagrants away?

He stepped out of the shadows, and she gasped and took a step backward. Ailurosa hissed, her hands dropping the bags she was carrying, and going to her mother's waist. Arcos growled low in his throat, and Medusa hissed long and slow. Aries, the only one with no warning sound, remained silent. The man was large, towering over Phoebe easily by a foot. The morning sun shown on him, as he emerged from the alley, showing a broad torso, large arms, and an impressive frame, all covered in fur. His head was that of cat, and his body was shaped like an animal, strong and feral. His fur was a dark gray, the color of heavy rain clouds. He had a white patch of fur around on eye and ear, and his right front paw was white. He looked like he would be more comfortable on all fours than on the two legs he was standing. He held out his arm, the one with the gray paw, saying nothing. On his forearm, among matted and clotted hair, was a wide gash, writhing with maggots. 

The smell of the wound alone would have sent someone retching, but in combination with the worms undulating through it, Phoebe had to take a hard swallow and a deep breath. "Oh," she said, and looked up at the man's face. He was still, like a statue, not even his white whiskers moving. She was torn as to what to do. He already knows where we live, she chided herself for her carelessness. "Come with me," she said and motioned for the children to pick up what they had dropped and began walking toward the warehouse.

Two other people came out of the shadows after him, she hadn't even noticed that anyone had been with him. One was a thin lizard, with a long neck and tiny head. The other was rabbit, his ears extending behind his head. They all moved very quietly, only slight swishes being made. She lead them to their warehouse, and up the stairs, all of them eerily silent.

"Sit down," she motioned to a chair at the table, and the cat sank down into it. The children rallied by their mother, eying the three strangers warily, as Phoebe went to her bookcase and got out her medical supplies. "Arcos, " she asked, him being the tallest, "get me a bowl please, and put some vinegar in it." She sat across from the cat, and motioned for him to put his arm on the table.

He complied, and Phoebe took a deep breath.

She immediately regretted it, as the smell from the wound was foul. It must have been festering for weeks to get to such a state. It looked like it hadn't been cleaned at all, blood and pus clotted the fur around the gash. She instructed for a rag and a bowl of water, which one of her children provided for her on the table. She held her breath, and leaned into work on his wound. With a pair of tweezers she picked out the maggots as she found them, placing them in the bowl of vinegar, making sure to dip the tip of the tweezers in it also. Then dipping them in the water to wash the vinegar off, and returning to the cut. When the pus and blood began to flow too much for her to be able to see, she laid the wet rag on it, and squeezed gently around his arm.

He would hiss in his breath when she did it, it was the only time he indicated he was pain.

When it was finally free of maggots and pus, she placed a compress of wild garlic on it, and wrapped it. "Is that the only wound you have?" It was the first voice that had been spoken since she started.

"No," the cat said, "but they have." He motioned to his two companions.

She looked at each of them, the rabbit having a slash on his thigh. It was beginning to smell, and only needed draining, and then got the same treatment as the cat's wound. The lizard had a shallow gash from his shoulder to his breast, so that he had to take his shirt off for her to see it. It wasn't infected, but it had developed some sort of white fuzz on it, which she surmised was a type of fungus. He was given a compress of rosemary to which he had to hold to his chest, as she didn't have a way to wrap it on him.

"Is that all?" she asked, clearing her throat.

"No," he said in his low voice.

No? What did he mean no? Dread began to creep up her spine.

"I have people who need healing," he said, standing up and looked down at her.

"You have people who need healing?" she repeated stupidly. "What do you mean?"

"I have people who are hurt," he said, "come with me."

Phoebe stood up, and straightened her shoulders and looked up at him. "I can't just go with you," she huffed. "I don't know who you are. I don't even know your name," She felt like she was tiny compared to these three mutants, and wondered if she had made a mistake by helping them.

"My name is Chategris," he said, pronouncing "Shahtahgree" with his Creole accent. 

"Chategris," she repeated. Grey cat, very original, she thought.

Chategris made a move toward the window overlooking the garden, looking at her expectantly. "Come," he said.

"No," she felt like she was Echo, doomed to repeat things forever. "I can't go with you. Where do you want me to go?" She looked around frantically, "What about my children?"

"They can come," he said. He moved his head in a nod toward the other two mutants. "Get the medical supplies."

"What?" she moved toward the bookcase where she kept her herbs and medical books. "You can't--" 

She was cut off by a "Yes, I can," and with a movement whose speed she hadn't expected from so large a creature, she was off her feet, and looking down out the window at the garden below. For a moment she thought he was going to drop her, but then she was flying through the air, Chategris' strong arm around her waist, toward the roof of the opposite building.

She screamed, and flailed, but then stopped flailing as the movement didn't stop or slowdown, and another roof was traversed, then another, then another. All she could see was the ground below her moving at an incredible rate, then a gaping hole with the sidewalk below. Each jump took the breath out of her, as she was flung half way across Chategris' shoulder and back. He ran on three legs, with his hurt arm wrapped around her waist. Every once in a while, she would smell the garlic from his compress. She cried out when jumped off a roof, she saw the ground coming at him and waited to hear herself splat, when they landed, he on his feet, she still on his shoulder.

The other two mutants landed next to him, and then she saw her own children fall from the sky and land, not quite as gracefully, on the ground. Had they kept up with Chategris' running? Had they jumped from building to building?

Chategris put her down, she was surprised as the gentleness of it. She look about and did not recognize where she was. It was a short building, only three stories tall, and they were in the back, near two large loading doors. The doors were open, with sunlight and warmth streaming in. Inside, were more mutants that Phoebe had thought possible, of every shape and size. There were cats, and dogs, and rabbits, and reptiles, and spiders, and insects, and plants, and even a horse. And they all looked like they'd been through the ringer.

He put his hand on her shoulder and lead her into the bay. It stank to high heaven, a mixture of urine, feces, sweat, and animal. The two mutants with Chategris brought her items inside and dumped them unceremoniously on a table. "Bring Gristle over here," he called. "Do whatever she says."

Two mutants, one looked like a stick-bug and the other some kind of beetle, brought a pig over on a stretcher. He was bloody all over, and Phoebe couldn't even tell if he was breathing. He was placed at her feet and she stared at him dumbfounded. Then she felt Ailurosa rub up against her side, and she snapped back into reality. Arcos, the largest of her kids, was half the size of most of the mutants here. If she didn't do something, who knew what these people would do her children, much less her. "Put him on the table," she said.

Once up on the table, she began to try and put him back together. The stretcher was filthy, the floor was filthy, the rags she requested were filthy, the bowls were filthy, the water was cloudy. She patched Gristle up the best she could, and then another mutant was put in front of her. Then another, and another, and another. Chategris had obtained a chair from somewhere and sat in it not far from her, watching her with hazel eyes, slow blinking and intense. After the fifth mutant, and two and half hours of being stared at, she turned to the large cat and snapped, "This place is filthy, no wonder all of our are crawling with maggots! How am I supposed to work with this?" She gestured to the dirty implements before her.

"What do you need to clean it?" he asked quietly.

"Bleach!" she spurted out the first thing that came to her mind, "lots of bleach, everywhere!"

Chategris' eyes didn't leave her, and the rest of him didn't move as he gave a barely imperceptible nod in her direction.

She huffed, and turned to her next patient.

Two patients later, someone said, "It's ready," over her shoulder.

"What's ready?" she asked, her face close the wound of her patient.

"The bleach area," he replied.

She looked up from the mutant she was tending. "What?" 

"The bleach area," he said, "like you asked."

Her patient was being lifted up, and her medical supplies gathered. Chategris stood up, and began to walk across the bay. She had no choice but to follow him, looking back and motioning her children to stay close to her. She was taken to a squared area that had, by goodness, been bleached. The concrete was white, the walls were white, and it smelled so strongly that it made it her eyes water. They laid the mutant she was tending down on the ground, spread her tools around her, and backed up. She knelt down and began working again.

Once all of the bad cases were done, she was able to slow down. Most of the wounds were slashes, several of them in rather uncomfortable places. She patched up several neck and groins, and not a few chests and bellies. Now she was dealing with superficial wounds, bruises, and knots.

"What happened here?" she asked as she bandaged up a bug. She wasn't entirely sure that she was helping the insects any, but they were showing up, so she did what she could.

Chategris, who hadn't moved, said, "We had a fight."

"With whom?" she asked incredulously.  
"With people with weapons."

"You're all done," she told the patient in front of her, and then looked around. She appeared to be done too. She certainly felt it. "Maybe you should avoid people with weapons then," she stood up and the world swooned around her.

Chategris was up in an instant, his paws on her shoulders. "You need to sleep," he said. "You have been doing this for 11 hours."

Had she? She turned and saw all four of her little ones on the floor, curled up asleep, and deep tiredness overtook her. "Yes," she said, and let herself be lead over her brood. She sank to the ground, cuddling with them. She felt Medusa slither and begin to wrap herself around her body, now being much too big to wrap around only and arm or a leg. As she did so, and those coils warmed her body, it occurred to Phoebe that Chategris had not once asked her for her help.


	4. Chapter 4

Phoebe was warm, her head laying on Medusa's chest, her snake wrapped around her, and the warm bodies of her other three pressed against her. She smelled bleach and....coffee.

Coffee? She opened her eyes and remembered where she was. She tried to sit up, but Medusa kept her from doing so. "Curly Que," she rubbed her softly scaled body, "let go."

Medusa yawned, her mouth opened huge, to show two large fangs, which had not yet stopped growing to Phoebe's consternation. Her forked tongue stuck out long, and then whipped back in her mouth as she unwound from the mother.

Chategris was sitting in the same chair he had sat in the day before, a mug with steaming liquid in his hand. The smell was coffee, dark, aromatic coffee.

"What's that smell?" Ailurosa asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"Coffee," Phoebe crooned. 

Chategris chuckled, and held the mug he was holding out to her. "Want some?" he asked in French.

Phoebe took the coffee, and shook her head at the same time. "I don't drink coffee," she answered him. "It tastes like mud water." She held the mug to her nose and inhaled deeply. "But it smells divine!"

"Taste it," he said, "it is fine, fine coffee."

Phoebe took a sip, and grimaced. "I am sure it is fine, fine mud water," she replied, handing the mug back to him.

"What are you saying?" Aries asked, his voice sounding slightly offended.

Phoebe hadn't noticed that she had answered Chategris in French. "That this is a fine cup of coffee," Phoebe explained, "but I don't like coffee."

"It smells good," Arcos said, sniffing the air.

"Can we have some?" Medusa asked.

She looked from face to face, each of them looking at her expectantly. "You won't like it," she said.

Chategris held out the mug again, a smug smile on his face. 

Arcos was the first one to take it, took a sip, and stuck out his tongue. "Ugh!" His siblings gave a similar reaction.

"It is an acquired taste," Phoebe assured them.

"Aw," Chategris still had that smile on his face, "they are little still. They need to start with cafe bebe," his voice was patronizing.

"What's cafe bebe?" Aries asked.

"It is a lot of milk, and a lot of sugar, and little bit of coffee," she explained. "It is used to have children acquire the taste."

"Mmm," Ailurosa piped up, "milk!"

"Can we try it?" Arcos asked. "It smells so good."

She looked at Chategris, so was waving his hand, to what she thought was no one in particular. "Get me some milk and sugar and mugs," he called. And, to Phoebe's amazement, they rapidly appeared in the hands of two mutants, and were put on the table. Chategris motioned to them, not moving from his chair.

Phoebe got up, fixed four mugs, and handed them out to her kids. Ailurosa drank her's down and her held her mug out for more. The others were more slow, but they finished them. "No more," she told them, "one a day is all."

"Aw," they chorused. 

"You are a harsh task master," Chategris said, still smiling. When Phoebe didn't reply, he said, "Let them play, they were standing watching you all day yesterday."

Let them play? Here, in this place, full of people who were hurt from a fight with who knows who? Where would they play? 

"Crevan!" Chategris called, "They're awake!" A fox came, a boy, with red fur and dressed in cargo pants and a vest. He seemed a little older than her own, and his eyes had a worldly look to them. "Get them some breakfast," Chategris said, indicating Phoebe's four children. "And then you can go play."

"Come on," Crevan said. The four of them didn't even wait for an answer from Phoebe, they all got up and scrambled to the fox.

Phoebe was in a kind of shock, there were other children, children for her children to play with, who wanted to play with them. "Behave!" she called after them, her gut twisting as she watched them go from her.

A mutant woman, a white rabbit, came up to them carrying a tray with a plate on it. Phoebe recognized her from the day before, she had been slashed on one of her lop ears which hung about her shoulders like long hair. She is...beautiful, Phoebe thought. She was the perfect blend of animal and human, much like Ailurosa. Her brown eyes were in the front of a lovely blended face. Her body was almost entirely human, save the white fur that covered. Her hands were hands, like human hands, save for the nails at the ends, and again the fur. "Breakfast," she said.

Phoebe leaned forward unconsciously, the smell from the plate was inviting. The plate held scramble eggs, a slab of ham, toast with butter on it, and small apple. She hadn't seen a meal like this in years, not even for dinner, much less for breakfast. She grabbed the apple and took a bite out of it like she ravenous. 

Chategris lounged back in the chair, watching her intently. "What do you have to drink?" he asked.

"Water," she answered with a mouthful of apple, after all, it was what she and kids usually drank. It was free.

Chategris laughed outright, and shook his head. "Non," he said, emphasizing his accent, "what would you like to drink?"

Phoebe swallowed, the smell of the ham in front of her making it hard to concentrate. What would she like to drink? It had been so long since that question had been brought before her, she had to consider it. "Tea, please," she said, grabbing the fork on the tray.

"Get the lady some iced tea," he said to the rabbit.

"No," Phoebe nearly spat out her ham. She felt her face blushing, she was acting like a barbarian, but the smell of the food was so good. She covered her mouth with her hand and said, "hot tea, with milk and sugar."

Chategris raised and eyebrow, and nodded in the rabbit's direction. "Get the lady what she wants."

The rabbit disappeared into the gaggle of mutants who were milling about the unloading bay.

"You have not told me your name, petite medicienne," Chategris crossed one of his outstretched legs over the other at the feet. 

Her name? Phoebe blinked. Mama, Mommy, Mom, Mother...the words ran through her head quickly, looking for a name that might have once belonged to her other than the one she'd been exclusively called for almost ten years. "Phoebe," she said, the name sounded strange on her tongue, like speaking a foreign language. "My name is Phoebe."

"Phoebe what?"

After a moment's pause, she said, "Just Phoebe. Nothing else." 

The rabbit returned with a mug of tea, and placed it on the table. Phoebe picked it up, smelled it, felt the warmth of it in her hands, looked down at it and saw the creaminess, and took a sip. It was like falling into a drug induced haze. She closed her eyes and absorbed herself in the sensation of the tea on her tongue, like her meditation, she emptied her mind and there was only the tea, sweet and creamy.

"You do not get tea much, do you?" Chategris spoke to her in French again.

She opened her eyes and smiled at him gratefully. It was nice to have adult banter with someone, not to have to explain things or teaching things. It was nice to be the one receiving the gentle teasing, and not always giving it. Don't smile, the unbidden thought told her. It was quiet, barely audible. She lowered the intensity of her smile and said, "The tea we have all the time. It is the sugar and milk that we don't get much."

He sat up, bringing his legs to the legs of the chair and leaned forward, a feral smile on his feral face. "You can have the milk and sugar you like while you are here, petite medicienne."

Something in his baring brought her up short. Her gut twisted again, like it had the day before when he'd come out of the alley. "Thank you," she said, putting the tea down. "I should check your wound, so we can get out of your hair."

"I don't mind you in my hair," he said.

She blushed, and looked down at his forearm. She unwrapped it, and already the stench of it had gone away. "You'll want to keep putting wild garlic compresses on it," she told him, "until the infection is gone." She bandaged it back up, "Same with everyone else who has been injured."

He flexed his hand and stared at her with his hazel eyes.

"That is all you really need." She stood up, hoping she was showing a calmer demeanor than she felt. "Is to make sure everyone keeps their wounds clean, and clear of infection."

"Alright," he said, standing up and looking down at her unblinkingly. "We will be sure to do that."

She stared at him for a moment, wondering what to do next, when the unbidden thought said, Go home. She took a deep breath and turned the rabbit who had been serving them. "Will you get my children, please?" she asked. "It is time for us to go home."

The rabbit looked to Chategris, as if for permission, and he nodded slightly. "I will take you home," he said.

"No," she took a step backwards, remembering her trip over. "You don't have to." 

"How will you know how to get home?" he asked smugly.

"I know how to get home, Mama!" Ailurosa's voice piped up from behind her. "I remember how we came over the rooftops."

Thank whatever it was that made Ailurosa a cat.

"See?" she motioned to her daughter. "We will be fine."

"How will you get from rooftop to rooftop?" He seemed to be playing a game with her, trying to checkmate her arguments.

"I am sure I will figure out how," she assured him, turning and walking away. The unbidden thought came to her again and told her, Don't say it. .She had taken a breath in and realized she was about to say, "You know where to find me if you need more help."

"You know where to find us if you need help," she heard Ailurosa's voice echo the thought she hadn't voiced herself. A feeling of dread overcame over.

"Indeed I do," Chategris answered.

She kept her head up, and continued walking away.

They went two buildings down before climbing the fire escape to reach the roof the building. The roofs, for the most part, were close together, and jumping from one to the other didn't even need a proper vault. When they got to the first roof that she hesitated at, each of her kids, even clumsy Aries, leaped over the space effortlessly.

"How did you all get so good at this?" she asked.

The four of them exchanged wary glances.

She had asked the question rhetorically, but the cautious glances sent off alarm bells. She stuck her hip out and put her hand on it, looking at them from across the divide of buildings.

"How did you all get so good at this?" she spoke each word firmly, her lips pinched and her eyebrow raised.

There was a moment of hemming and hawing, before Arcos said, "We practice at home."

"What do you mean you practice at home?" her voice raised an octave.

"We play on the rooftops sometime," Ailurosa admitted. "We jump from one to the other. It isn't hard."

"It isn't hard?" She looked down to the ground so many stories below.

"No," Aries bounded over the space back to her, and lifted her up off of her feet. Her son was almost the same height as she, and had little buds of horns popping out from his forehead. However, she had no idea he was anywhere near strong enough to pick her up so easily. She was more surprised when h e jumped over the space while holding her as if she weighed nothing. He put her down as soon as he landed, and smiled proudly.

She shook her finger at him, "No," she said, as if to a toddler. "No, no, no," the other three got a finger wagged at them also. "I will find my own way across." There was a moment of silence. "And all of you are in trouble when we get home."

"Awww," was chorused around her. "Why?"

"Because you were jumping over buildings," she said tartly.

"We couldn't have kept up with Chategris yesterday if we didn't know how to jump over roofs," Ailurosa whined.

"You did it without telling me."

"You would have said no if we told you!" Medusa's voice was raising in volume.  
"Yes, I would have," Phoebe replied. "And you did it anyway."

"If we didn't ask," Arcos' voice was soft, "then we didn't disobey you."

Phoebe's mind went blank. "Well," she managed to get out, "you're in trouble anyway." She pointed in the direction they were headed. "Ailurosa, take us home."

Ailurosa glared at Arcos, "Why'd you have to tell her, honey-for-brains?"

"I don't have honey-for-brains," he said, following her to the next rooftop. "You're the one with milk-for-brains."

Medusa glided in the air after him, looking as if she were flying, and landing on her chest on the roof. Right after her was Aries, and Phoebe followed until they got the next large gap in between buildings.

The kids got over no problem, while Phoebe examined her surroundings. She had to figure a way across these things on her own, there was no way her stomach or head to take being carried over them. It was nauseating. She saw the rigging for the fire escape, if she could reach that it would get her a little closer to the other building. She leaped from the edge of the roof, watching the ground come rushing up toward her, and then her hand grabbed onto the rigging. She spun around it, using it like the uneven bars, and then threw herself up and landed on the adjacent roof.

"Woohoo!" Aries raised a fist in the air.

"You go, Mama!" Medusa slithered up to her, and curled around her body, and then uncurled in one fluid motion.

Ailurosa rolled her eyes and smiled. Then jumped to the next roof. Each of the kids followed her without looking back to see if their mother was keeping up.

When they got back home, she sent them all to their rooms from the peace and quiet and for them to "think on what they did wrong." She needed uninterrupted time to think. Then after that, she needed some uninterrupted time for yoga. And then after that, she needed some uninterrupted time to meditate

Her world had been broken open. There were other mutants out there, close by, who knew where she was, and now she knew where they were. Or, Ailurosa knew. That was as good as her knowing. Her children had played with other children (she wondered what they played, she would have to ask). She had patched up at least two dozen people, if not more, and had eggs and ham and toast for breakfast. She had taken a deep whiff of coffee, and she could still taste the sweet cream of the tea in her mouth. They were not isolated anymore, their world now belonged to a different place where other people resided. She knew she would see these people again, just as she knew the poetry would come to her tonight when she wrote by candle flame after everything was quiet. A cocoon had been sliced roughly open, a cocoon she didn't even know she had made, and now she was raw with emerging from it.

At five o'clock she called the children out from their rooms, put together with pieces left over from construction projects to separate out their spaces. She sat them all in front the TV, and did something she hadn't even considered doing in the past 9 years. 

They watched the evening news.  
***

Phoebe hadn't realized how much she'd sheltered her four children from the world of humans. She thought that shopping in the alleys and helping homeless men and women was showing them the world around them. They read books voraciously, except for Aries, who was much slower than his siblings. Didn't that teach them about the human world?

The news showed her that it didn't. She had confused the human world with the world of humanity, and in so sheltering her little ones, they had not been aware of what people were capable of doing. They were often shocked at the violence the news portrayed, and asked her question after question as to why someone would do such things. She had no answer for them.

It gave her a way to talk to them about people's intentions, however late the talk might have been. Their encounter with Chategris and his group had left them in a buzz of excitement.

Splayed on the couch the morning after their adventure, the four of them recounted their morning.

"We played baseball, Mama, have you heard of that?" Aries asked.

"Yes," Phoebe tried to be happy for them. She was having a difficult time.

"I did excellent at tagging people out at the bases," Medusa bragged.

"And I did excellent getting to the bases," Arcos said.

"What about you, Ailurosa?" Phoebe asked. "What were you excellent at?"

"I wasn't excellent at any of it," she said. "I didn't really like the game all that much. All it is is hitting a ball with a stick and running. What's the fun in that?"

Phoebe chuckled and ruffled the top of her head, "I have always thought the same thing."

"I think Crevan is cute, though," she said with a giggle.

Phoebe thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head, and was glad she wasn't facing the couch at that particular moment. "Cute?" her voice sounded much too high as talked. She cleared her throat and turned. "Cute?" she said again.

"Don't you think he's cute, Mama?" Ailurosa twisted on the couch back to better face her mother. 

"I...uh..." she blinked. "I didn't notice, honey. I was busy patching people up."

"You patched a lot of people up, Mama," Aries said.

"I like is fur," she said dreamily. "He likes baseball, and carting."  
"Carting?" Phoebe was feeling quite out of her element.

"They're like cars, but they small they only fit one person," Aries said.

"You mean a go-cart?" she asked.

Ailurosa giggled. "Yes," she said. "He said the next time we come over, he'll take me riding."

Phoebe blinked, "I though it only fit one person," she said slowly.

"I don't know," Ailurosa said, "maybe he can fit two in it."

Not if I can help it, she thought. She took a deep breath, wasn't this kind of thing supposed to start at a later age than 9? 

"Do you know they go out into the city by themselves, Mama?" Medusa said. 

"They said they knew a great place for art supplies," Arcos told her.

"They?" Phoebe's mind didn't seem to be working right. "How many were there?"

The kids all exchanged looks, "Maybe 12," Arcos said. 

"They were all Crevan's age?"

"Yeah," said Aries, "I think so."

"There wasn't anybody younger?" 

"No," said Ailurosa, swishing her tail back and forth as she lounged on the back of the couch. 

She doubted very much these mutants were children. They might be age, for they didn't seem too much older than her own, but she suspected they were in a whole other category from her own. Worldly in a way that frightened her for her kids. Phoebe headed toward the large open area at the opposite end of the warehouse floor from the living space. "I am going to work out," she said. She needed to do something that took all of her concentration, so she didn't have to think about this.

***

Two days later, Ailurosa's words rang true. She and the children were tending their little garden, Phoebe was clipping some juniper branches, when she heard "Hey, Medicienne!" The voice said the word with no trace of a French accent, so that she giggled. She moved the ivy aside on the fence, and saw six of the 'children' from Chategris' place passing the garden on the sidewalk. Their arms were laden with bags.

The kids began to climb the rope that hung down from their top story window that lead into their garden, which was inaccessible any other way, unless one jumped the high fence. They scrambled up quickly ahead of her, her own way was always much slower. She had to use the knots they'd tied in the rope, the kid's didn't seem to need it. Even Aries, with his large, stout frame could do it faster than she. And she didn't think she did it all that slow.

The kids were already headed down the stairs when she climbed in the window, calling out to the kids on the street. They were like normal children, receiving their friends when they asked to come out and play. For some reason, she didn't like it.

She stayed in their home, and waited for the kids to come up. She could them all chattering, both hers and the others. When they emerged from the stairwell, Crevan who was beaming a smile at a beaming Ailurosa, turned it Phoebe. "Hello, Medicienne," he said. "We've brought you some stuff. Chategris says if there is anything else you want, to let us know, and we'll get it."

She took a deep breath. "That's very nice of all," she said. She wasn't going to ask Chategris for anything. Being his debt did not seem like a good plan to her. 

They put the bags on the table, and her kids began taking the items out. "Mama," Ailurosa exclaimed, "milk!" She held up a gallon jug.

"And sugar," Medusa said, "and flour."

"And tea!" Arcos gasped, taking a canister out of the bag, "and coffee!"

"And honey," Aries took out a great big jug of it. Arcos "mmmm"ed and reached for it, Aries swatting his paw away.

"Chategris wanted me to give this to you," Crevan handed her a small shopping bag. "He said it was for you by yourself. Not to share."

She opened to bag, and in it was a chocolate bar. A chocolate bar...she hadn't had chocolate in...how long?

"Of course it is share," she said, smiling as she opened the package. Crevan and the others of his group looked shocked as she broke off the little squares it was divided into and handed one to each child. It left three for her. "You can tell Chategris that I had more than everyone else, and thank you."

Crevan's group ate their chocolate slowly, obviously knowing what it was. Her own, however, gobbled the little square once they put it in their mouths. "Oh, Mama," Arcos crooned. "That is good."

She chuckled, "Yes it is, honey."

"We can stick around for a while," one of Crevan's group said. "Wanna go out?"

"Can we, Mama?" Medusa said pleadingly. "Pleeeasssseee?" All four them drawled out the word.

She sighed. "Alright." They all rushed toward the stairs, "but stay in the block, and don't let anyone see you!"

"OK!"

"I mean it, only these four warehouses!"  
They were already down the stairs, and she didn't know if they heard her or not.

She began to put the food on the table away, placing the cold items in the old fridge that worked so well, they had to keep items from the back of it or else they froze. She held the box of tea, it was Sephisa Breakfast Black Tea. A gourmet tea. A cup of sweet, creamy tea, she thought. Don't mind if I do.


	5. Chapter 5

Her four little mutants were gone all day. The warehouse was eerily silent, only the knocks and scuttles of the old building expanding and contracting in the heat of the day. She drank her cup of tea slowly, with her eyes closed, but when she was finished, she was still alone and all was quiet.

She hoped that they were staying within the block. That if a human being came into view they'd hide. How did Chategris' people deal with human? They obviously had no issue with her. But then again, they had all been beat to hell and needed someone to doctor them.

She looked at her bookcase, noting she didn't have any books on insects. She needed some books on...insectology. That wasn't right, what was the study of insects anyway? On the top of the bookcase sat the vase of juniper branches, a stoneware white with a chip in the back. The top of the bookcase had become an altar of sorts, an unintentional place to put precious things. A small bowl of the children's milk teeth, the ones that hadn't been swallowed, sat at one end of the shelf, and another small bowl on the other side with her wedding and engagement ring in it. Photos in frames of her and the children, taken with an old, discarded Polaroid camera, were on either side of the vase. The photos of the kids were when they were younger, still little children and not something in between a child and a teenager. She had always thought the 'tween' movement was idiotic, but now she could see why parents sectioned it out.

She thought of the previous conversations she'd had with the kids, and of Ailurosa's question of "Don't you think he's cute, Mama?" 

She made her way to the work out room, a purposefully set up gymnasium with a makeshift jumping horse, a balance beam, a platform to give her some height to able to reach the ducting nearer the ceiling that she used for the uneven bars, a section of the concrete covered in an area rug for floor exercises, and a section covered in wood flooring for practicing yoga and for dancing. While everything would have made another gymnast cringe, Phoebe loved her homemade gym. She'd made it with the children, and was proud of them all for having done so. She did some cursory stretches and then jumped to the rafters. 

She would tell Ailurosa that "Of course he's cute, Kitty Cat." But she couldn't tell if he was cute or not. He looked like a fox in a person's body to her. How does one know if a fox is cute or not? She thought all of her children were beautiful, in a mother's way, and she knew it was a mother's way. Ailurosa's fur was shiny, with beautiful markings around her eyes, and down the back of her head, disappearing into her shirt, only to reappear on her tail. Arcos was fuzzy, like a bear should be, a wonderful shade of brown. His paws were big, and if one looked closely, one could see a slight streak of paler brown hair going down the middle of each of them. Aries was wide, he would have very impressive shoulders when he grew up. His fleece was still downy and white, even though he was beginning to get some black down his back and near his hooves. Medusa was the gorgeous dark green of tropical forest from which Phoebe was sure she'd originally come. She had diamonds of even darker green running up her back, and then twisting to her front, to twist back around until they ended at the top of her head. Two diamonds came down around her eyes, like the fangs she had grown. Her thin arms had never thickened, and they still looked like they would break easily, but Phoebe knew better. They were strong, like the rest of her. If she stood up to her full height, as high as she could get on her tail, she was already over six feet. 

She had no way of gauging whether any of them were considered good-looking in any other standard that the one she'd set, very much like a dog groomer sets up for animals. The thought almost made her loose her grip, she was ashamed of it.

She vaulted, and twirled, and twisted, and spun, and still couldn't get her mind to quiet. It was not until the sun began to go down and her four precious things came back up the stairs that she was able to feel even remotely calm.

Sitting at the table, all of them eating sandwiches from items in the many bags brought to them, the kids talked over each other trying to tell her what happened during the day.

"We showed them all the warehouses."

"And introduced them to the alley cat."

"They taught us how to do power kicks!"

"I tried to teach them to back flips!"

She listened to them tell about their day, an ordinary day of children playing. Why did it bother her so much? Nothing they said indicated anything awry, no reason for her feel uneasy. It is just different, she told herself. You don't like that you're not in control. But that reasoning seemed hollow. She had allowed them to play without her supervision for many years now, keeping the boundaries to the four warehouses and their large lots that made up the block and become invisible if a human happened to come into view. They had never been caught by a human while within their little kingdom. She knew they did things that she would not approve of, but she also knew they did not often directly disobey. She knew they had broken things, on purpose, in the other warehouses, and in this one. She knew, now, that had been jumping over roofs for some time. She knew they had a little workshop in the adjacent warehouse that they built secret things in, that they had a TV in there where they watched shows of which she would not have approved. She knew that if a human did come into their space, they stealthily scared the wits out of them, again in ways of which she would not approve. They kept things from her, she knew this, but they were innocent things. And they knew they were innocent things, for when they felt guilty about doing something wrong, all four of them would confess. 

She recalled a few years ago when someone had left a car just at the edge of their block. They had bounced and begged to explore it, and she told them they could, after she was done in the garden so she could go with them. She was too afraid that the car as in full view, and an abandoned car was probably stolen. She didn't want the police to come by looking for it, and find her little ones instead. They had gone off by themselves, taken huge amounts of it apart, taken the parts back to their warehouse, and carried them up the stairs all so quietly, she hadn't heard them come by the garden wall. Before she had finished with the garden, they had all come down the rope and stood by her, their eyes wide and their mouths pouted. "Mommy," Ailurosa, said, "we went to the car."

Phoebe put down her spade, and raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" 

"We took some stuff off it," Arcos said, looking everywhere save at his mother.

Phoebe raised her other eyebrow. "Oh?" the word was drawn out slower.

"We took the stuff upstairs," Medusa told her.

"Oh?" she crossed her arms in front of her chest. She looked at each of them in turn. "Why did I ask you not go to that car by yourselves?"

"Because a human might see us," Ailurosa said.

"But humans see us all the time, " Aries whined.

"Lamb's Ear, those humans aren't..." she searched how to put it nicely, "aren't reliable witnesses."

Aries looked at her quizzically.

"She means they're crazy," Ailurosa elucidated. "No one will believe them if they say they saw us."

"Oooooh," Aries nodded his head knowingly.

"If a human sees you, it is dangerous," she told them. "They may take you away, or they may hurt you because they're scared." She looked each in the eye again. "I do not tell you to do something to be mean. I do it to keep you safe."

Each little face had looked so remorseful, she didn't have the heart to punish them properly. Instead, she made them stay in her sight for three days.

"Do you know none of them have Mamas," Medusa said, bringing Phoebe back to the present.

"What?"

"We told them that wasn't possible," Aries said. "It takes a Mommy and a Daddy to have a baby."

"They said they didn't have any Daddies either," Arcos said.

"And you can't have a person unless they were a baby first," Aries nodded sagely.

"No," Phoebe put her sandwich down, she'd lost her appetite. "No, you can't."

"How do they not have a Mama or Daddy?" Ailurosa asked.

"Did you ask them?"

"Yes," Medusa was vehement.

"What did they say?" 

"They said they didn't know," Ailurosa said.

Phoebe had told the four of them the story of the start of their life together, putting in details that she thought they might be able handle as they got older and retold the story. She had also told them a little about her life before them, which had eventually lead to a conversation of how one gets to birth a baby. She had reassured them that each of them had a birth mother and a birth father, or they wouldn't exist, just as the two children she'd given birth to did. And just as she didn't take care of them anymore, their birth parents did not take cared for them. She did.

"Did they say how they came to be with Chategris'..." what exactly would she call it, "...group?"

"We didn't ask," Aries said.

"Well, they have a mother and father somewhere," Phoebe said, "whether they know or not."

"That's what I told them!" Aries said, eying Phoebe's half eaten sandwich. "You gonna eat that?"

Phoebe laughed, "No," pushed the plate toward him. "You go ahead and have it."

***

For the next three days, Phoebe was inundated with requests to go see the kids new friends. "We finally have friends!" Medusa threw her arms into the air.

"You've always had friends," Phoebe fought a wave of guilt welling up in her. "You've had the roach farm, and the ant farm, and the alley cats, and that cat that lived with us for two years--"

"She left," Aries interrupted.

"I told you," Phoebe explained, "she went off and married that gray cat who kept visiting."

"It isn't the same thing," Arcos said. "They can't talk about to us."

"You have each other," Phoebe said, "and you have me."

Ailurosa laughed, almost derisively, "Oh Mama!" Phoebe braced herself for 'You're not our friend," and was filled with adoration when she said, "You have to be our friend. You're our Mama."

***

Phoebe was able to meditate to clear her mind some, and she was able to work out to clear her mind some, but invasive thoughts snuck their way through the back of her mind. In an effort to quiet her mind, she clapped her hands to summon the kids to her, and said "Let's dance!" So they made their way to their little makeshift yoga/dance floor, Arcos put on the radio, and Phoebe tried to loose herself in the music and movement.

Dancing was her drug of choice. When nothing else worked to quiet her mind, when she was overcome with feelings of guilt, or inadequacy, or the intense loneliness that came upon her, she would turn on the club music station, and move her body in whatever way it wanted to move. She would loose herself in the music, and time would go by without her knowing it. The kids would start out dancing with her, each of them moving their bodies in a way that was natural to their species. There had been many times, however, that when Phoebe had returned to the here and now, her body shining with sweat, her hair sticking to her forehead and neck, and the kids were asleep on the the edge of the dance floor or on the couch. Hours had gone by, and her body was numb. She would collapse into her bed, and before the morning, all four of her children would be in bed with her, Medusa wrapped around her, Ailurosa curled into a ball at her thighs, and each of the boys on either side of her.

Tonight was no different. The kids stayed with her as long as they could, then exhausted they bedded down around her, dance music still beating through warehouse.

***

The pleading for playtime did not abate, so Phoebe finally consented for them to go to Chategris' bay. She only needed to be directed by Ailurosa once, and she used her new trick of using the fire escape rigging to swing from building to building when the space was two wide. Someone must have seen them coming, for Crevan and several of his peers were waiting on the top of their building. Her children left her in a rush, no longer waiting for her catch up, and then disappeared down the building with their friends.

She walked down the fire escape down the bay, to find Chategris waiting at the bottom of it for her. 

"We get a visit from la petite Medicienne," he said. 

I came to check on my patients, the unbidden thought said, whispering, except for her search for a response other than "Bonjour," she would not have heard it. "I came to check on my patients," she told him. Your patients? she thought to herself, you're getting kind of high and mighty, aren't you, now, Phoebe? 

"Oh, a house call," he overly-pouted, leaning against the building. "Not a social call."

"No," she informed him, glad to have that understood between the two of them. Her uneasy feeling around him had not diminished from the last time she was here. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that set her alarm bells off, and that unnerved her. Was she just misreading him because it had been so long since she'd been around other people? "Do have somewhere I can check everyone?" she asked. "That's clean?" She chided herself for being snide, but his reaction was grating.

"Ah, oui," he replied, chuckling. "Your emergency room is still up and cleaned to your instructions." He lead her into the bay toward the back where she'd been before.

While the emergency square was still up and clean, the rest of the place hadn't been cleaned up any. It smelled strongly of animal, decay, and infection. "People are still hurt," she stated.

"Oui," he answered.

"Perhaps if you cleaned up the rest of the place, they'd heal faster," she didn't chide herself this time.

"Ah, la petite Medicienne, I am not the only one who lives here. I can control much, but not all."

"I am not une medicienne," she said. "I haven't had any medical training at all." 

"You fix wounds," he said, "you give healing agents. I have seen you with the people on the street, and you have helped them like a doctor would. You are our la Medicienne."

Phoebe held out her hand, "Can I see your arm, please?" Chategris held out his hurt arm, still bandaged. As she unwrapped it, she heard his words in her head again, 'I have seen with the people on the street...' He had been watching her, following her, for there were no people in her block of warehouses. The kids had made sure of that. How long had he been doing that? How in the world did he do it without her knowing? What was left of her assurance that she'd been careful evaporated as she checked his arm. "This is healing nicely," she said. "I think you can put something like comfrey on it to heal the cut and be fine."

"Something like comfrey?" he repeated mockingly.

She sighed, and took out a small jar of salve that she had brought with her in her messenger bag. "This," she put it on the table. "Comfrey is a plant." He stretched his arm closer to her. She understood what he wanted, and she sighed again, opening the baby food jar she'd found in the trash that was now the pot for her healing agent, and rubbed some gently on his wound. When she done, he simply stood in front of her, looking at her intently with his hazel eyes. After a moment of silence, she asked, "And the others?"

His smile was derisive. "La petite Medicienne is here," he called, still looking at her, "come get your check up!" 

Several mutants came up to the table, but Chategris did not move. Phoebe simply turned from him, so she used the other side of the table. 

Some cuts were still infected, some hadn't even had the original wrapping removed. "You need to change the dressing," she said over to each person. "You have to keep the wound clean." She would get a "Yes," or a grunt in reply

The few splints she'd applied were only still on the insects. All of the mammals, reptiles, and birds had removed theirs. She told what looked like a short stork or a tall egret that if he didn't keep his splint on, his wing/arm would heal crooked. He shrugged at her. The insects, however, kept theirs on, she noticed, out of necessity. Where they had been injured had broken their carapace, and the appendage couldn't stay upright without the splint. They were in different combinations of human and insect, and she had no idea how they would heal. She smelled no infection on any of them, they just smelled like bugs to her. She applied the comfrey salve to them also, and splinted them up again. Could insects heal their exoskeletons? Or once they were broken, were they broken forever? She did notice that none of the insects with internal injuries came for a 'check up'.

Her mind was calm as she worked, she concentrated on what was at hand. She was able to push her revulsion away. Some of the mutants were downright hideous, they could easily be called monsters. Most of them smelled atrocious, strongly aromatic of the animal they were. More than half had scowls on their faces when she dealt with them, and she couldn't determine whether they were scowling at her, or whether they scowled all the time, and that was their regular expression. She seemed to know intuitively what to do with most of the wounds, despite her having only dealt with anything major a week prior to today. The unbidden thought did not come to her, but it reminded her of writing poetry, when the unbidden thought became her own, and there was no difference between the two. She would have described it more of a feeling, but there was no emotion attached to the knowing.

When was done with everyone who came up, she put the lid back on her various salve jars, and saw a black hand with pale gray stripes place a mug on the table. She looked up to see a female...was she a badger...a convoluted looking cat or dog...smile slightly and then walk away. 

Chategris was still standing by the table, or had come back to the table, she wasn't sure which. He motioned to the mug with his head, "Drink," he instructed.

She picked up the mug, it was sweet, creamy tea, piping hot. It reminded her of the tea she had at home now. "Thank you for the groceries," she took a sip. "And for the chocolate."

"It isn't anything," he waved his hand dismissively. "If you need anything else, ask."

"Actually," Phoebe said slowly, "I would like a book." Why not use the offer of a gift to get some information she needed?

"A book?" he asked. "Any book?" He looked incredulous.

She managed to smile at his confusion. "No, a book on insects." 

He raised one of his eyebrows, the whiskers sticking from it making it very apparent.

"I don't know much about insects," she explained. "If I had a biology book of some kind on them, I would be able to help them better." She looked around the cargo bay at all the mutants milling about. "When they need a 'check up'." 

Chategris nodded slowly with an "Ah." He leaned against he table with a large gray paw, and looked down at her, that derisive smile back on his face. "Anything else?"

She paused for a moment, and then asked, before even thinking about it, "Where did all your people come from?"

He looked about him, "The same place all mutants come from," he said. "Mutagen."

Phoebe furrowed her brow. "Mutagen? What's that?"

Chategris turned his head gracefully, as if to get a different angle to look at her. "You don't know?" He chuckled. "It is a goo, green and blue. If it touches a human or an animal or a plant it turns them into..." he paused and looked at his white paw, "something else."

"Where does this mutagen come from?" Why had he not mentioned any spaceship flying brains, or robot riding brains? Didn't these creature have something to do with them?

"Je ne sais pas," _, he replied. "I know only that it is, and what it does." He looked at her closely, his hazel eyes blinking slowly. "How did you become a mutant?"_

_She blinked, surprised. "I'm not a mutant." Couldn't he tell that by looking at her?_

_He smiled derisively again, "Ah, oui, of course not. Then, how did you come to be the caretaker of mutants?"_

_He hadn't mentioned about the brains, or the kind of experience that she remembered from all those years ago. "A lab," she said finally._

_He nodded, "Many of us came from laboratories," he said. "Many of us came from accidents. Many of us came misfortune." He smiled, baring his teeth and looking very feral. "But with misfortune comes benefits."_

_"Yes," she put her now empty mug down on the table. "I am sure it does." She took her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "I need to go now," the words came out quicker than she intended. Could send for my children to meet me on the roof?"_

_"Oui," he replied._

_"If anyone needs anything else," she said, "they can come to me." She didn't plan on making house calls to this place a common occurrence._

_Chategris only nodded._

_"Au revoir," she told him, and returned her good bye with a chuckle._

_"Adieu, ma petite Medicienne."_

_The word 'ma' was not lost on her._

_***_

_The next day, Crevan appeared at their warehouse, he and his peers loaded down with books. "We have a gift for you, Medicienne." Ailurosa ran over to him, stopping short of actually hugging the boy. He beamed a smile at her and put the books down in front of the bookshelf._

_"Please don't call me Medicienne," she said. "My name is Phoebe."_

_Crevan nodded, "Phoebe the Medicienne."_

_Phoebe sighed. "No, just Phoebe." She went over to the stack of books, there were at least 15 of them, all of them on insects._

_"Apparently, what the Medicienne wants, the Medicienne gets," Crevan said. He smiled again at Ailurosa, who twitched her tail, before saying, "I can't stay. I have to get back. Chategris wanted me to give you these." He waved, and then was gone down the stairs._

_Ailurosa giggled, "Look at all the books, Mama."_

_"You'll certainly know about bugs now," Arcos said._

_"It would appear so," Phoebe said._

_"The news is on, Mama," Medusa announced later on that evening._

_They all sat down on the couch facing the little TV set. The top story was about a break in that had occurred the night before at The Strand, one of New York City's premier book shops. The front windows had been broken, and all that was taken was the cash register and their entire section of entomology books._

_Entomology. Phoebe knew that word, now that she heard it. The study of insects._

_She looked over at the row of books she'd placed neatly on her medical bookshelf. She felt slightly sick to her stomach as she came to a realization, quickly, the unbidden thought and her own the same one._

_Chategris' group wasn't a group. It was a gang._


	6. Chapter 6

The very next day, Phoebe had a patient come to her warehouse for a check up. It was the lizard she had treated the very first day, with the infection and what she thought might be a fungal growth. He was alone, and looked rather sheepish, glancing around the floor in a way he had not when he had come with Chategris.

"Are you alright?" Phoebe asked him.

"I--" his voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "I need help."

She was struck by the plaintive tone his voice. "Alright," she replied. She had to get over this uncomfortable feeling that welled inside her whenever she was in the presence of one of these people. Again, she told herself it was the newness of the situation, the invasion of her space by strangers, the knowledge that she'd been watched for some time without her suspecting a thing. "Are you here by yourself?"

"Yes," he said.

She immediately felt better. Her children were out playing, and knowing he had come alone helped to set her at ease. "Let me see your wound," she instructed, remembering his gash on his chest.

It was healing nicely the last time she had seen it, and it still was. The fungus was completely gone, there was no infection present, and it had sealed over. She could even see new scales beginning to form on the top and bottom edges. "It looks fine," she said, "does it hurt?"

"No," he said.

"Is something else the matter?"

He looked at her and said nothing.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me what's the matter," she tried to make her voice gentle.

"You cannot tell Chategris," his voice was low. "Don't tell him I was here."

"Why would I tell him?" she said indignantly. "It isn't any of his business who comes here and what they do when are here."

He looked at her with black eyes, and nodded slowly. He then began to unbutton his pants. She stood up, her eyes wide, and put her hands out in front of her. "Um," she felt her cheeks getting hot, and she backed up. She looked around wildly, and grabbed a plate that was still on the table, and held it up in what she hoped was a threatening gesture.

The lizard shook his head. "No," he said, plaintively. "My thigh..."  
Phoebe let out a deep breath, and put the dish down. "Oh," her cheeks were hot for an altogether different reason now. "Alright."

He slid the pants down, to reveal a series of puncture wounds in his upper thigh and lower hip. They were still weeping slightly, not having scabbed over completely. She looked down at his pants, and saw they were bloody. How in the world had she missed that?

She came back up to him, all of her fear vanishing. "What happened to you?" 

He sighed, "I was hurt."

Bending down, she examined the wound, gently touching the edges of each mark. "Is this..." no, she had to be wrong, "is this a bite?"

He didn't answer.

She looked around, thinking she needed him to lie down, but when she saw that the back of thigh also had marks, she changed her mind. "When did this happen?"

"This morning," he told her.

She stood up, went to the sink, got salt and hot water, and a bag of bandages made from torn t-shirts that she and kids had found and bleached. As she tended the wounds, cleaning out each with salt water, placing a bandage with pressure on the holes that were still bleeding, and placing bandages with salve on those that were not. "What is your name?" she asked, trying to make small talk. Her face at his groin certainly put her ill at ease, and she suspected from his voice, it did him also. A little place in the back of her brain hoped her children did not come home quite yet. Seeing her kneeling in front of a lizard-man who was naked from the waist down was not a picture she wanted etched in their mind.

"Razz."

She wondered how he got that name. "Well, Razz, I think we can get you fixed up." When he did not reply, she kept talking, unable to take the silence. "How long have you been a...uh..." she felt stupid having started the question.

"A mutant?" he finished.

"No," she said. "I was going to say, how long have you been with Chategris?"

"I've been with the Grey Cats for 7 years," he said.

The Grey Cats, Phoebe thought derisively. That's as original as Chategris. She cleared her throat, "Why...uh...what..." she took a deep breath. "Why did you join the...Gray Cats?"

He was quiet for a long time, so that Phoebe thought he was not going to answer her. "Not everyone is as lucky as your children," he said finally.

She looked up at him from his leg, unable to come up with a response. Turning back to his wound, and being unable to think of anything else to say, she asked, "Do the Gray Cats often break into bookstores?" Her ears pounded as she waited for his answer.

"Not usually," he replied, "but the Medicienne seems to get special treatment." Phoebe didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. "We haven't had a doctor before," Razz went on.

"I am not a doctor," Phoebe told him. "I am not a medical professional at all. I am an amateur herbalist."

His leg moved as he shook his head, "We haven't had an amateur herbalist before." 

When she was done, she washed her hands at the sink, and when she turned back to Razz, he'd pulled his pants back up and buttoned them. "You need to keep the wounds clean," she told him.

He nodded.

"Can you do that?" she had serious doubts after yesterday.

"Yes," he said. He looked down, and then back up at her. "Thank you," his voice was very low.

Phoebe smiled. "You're welcome," she replied warmly. She felt a sudden and strong urge to reassure him. "I promise that I will keep your visit between you and I."

He nodded, and then turned around and walked out of the warehouse.

***

She had a steady stream of visitors from that day onward. Many of them were insect-mutants, and the books on entomology came in very handy. Most of them had carapace injuries that weren't healing, and she was able to keep the flesh underneath from getting infected, even if she couldn't help much for the healing of the exoskeleton.

By asking questions as she worked, she discovered that some of the mutants had been humans before being exposed to mutagen and some were insects first. The way in which they mutated did not necessarily indicate which was the original being--a mutant that looked mostly like an insect may very well have been a human before his or her transformation, and vice versa. She wasn't able to figure out a pattern as to how a mutation took place. Perhaps there isn't a pattern, she told herself, and I am looking for something that isn't there.

In the evenings after these visits, especially when the patient had been a mammal, she would watch her children play and wonder if they were animals or humans first. Then, she would tell herself it didn't matter, and she'd pile them all into the double mattress that they all shared and sleep surrounded by warmth and soft breathing.

She curtailed social visits to the cargo bay, insisting that her children stay within their block. She even encouraged them to build things in their secret workshop in an attempt to keep them home, going on 'shopping' trips to acquire items for them. They were surprised she knew about it, and even more surprised she wasn't upset about it. She suggested they move the workshop to the floor below their home, and they readily agreed, and helped her to move their items over.

She was impressed by what they had already constructed, and by the amount of items they'd collected. "Where did you kids get all this stuff?" she asked as they carted things from one building to the other.

"It was in the warehouses all around," Aries said. 

There were cardboard boxes of nuts and bolts, of nails, of washers, all used, most of them rusted. "We will have to find some sandpaper," Phoebe said, "to clean a bunch of this stuff up."

All four of them beamed smiles at her. "Will you help us make stuff, Mama?" Medusa asked.

"Of course," she told them.

She knew a few hours walk away there was a military complex, and they must have a dump. After all, the military produced a lot trash. She presented a plan to the kids. "If we leave in the afternoon," she said, "and keep to the shadows, we can reach the dump at night. If we're careful, we can get some stuff that you might find useful for your projects."

"Seriously?" Aries eyes went wide. "We can get stuff from a military dump?"

"As much as we can carry across the city," she laughed.

The trip was the farthest that the little family had ever been from their warehouse. The walk there during the daylight was not bad at all, but as the sun began to set, they had to keep hidden more and more often, as more and more humans came into alleys. Weren't the back streets supposed to be less populated after dark? she thought. The people were wearing dark clothing, had their heads covered with hoods or hats, and spoke in low voices. 

The five them turned a corner quietly, and came face to face with four young men. The one closest to them smiled upon seeing Phoebe, "Well, what have here?"

The other three began to laugh, but stopped suddenly when Arcos came out of the shadows and growled.

"What the--?" the one in front backed away, his eyes wide.

Then Ailurosa, Aries, and Medusa followed suit. Aries made a strong huffing sound, while the girls hissed, Ailurosa high pitched and forceful, Medusa beginning low and and building in intensity.

With an exclamation of curses, followed by screams, the four young men ran out of the alley.

Ailurosa laughed, "Did you see them run!?"

"That was fun," Aries said.

"Does this mean we don't have to hide in the shadows anymore?" Medusa asked, still hissing slightly.

"No," she said, rubbing Arcos' head, "we still need to be careful." She kissed him on the temple. "Thank you." Then, Phoebe was smiling, even though she knew she shouldn't have been. "But," her eyes twinkled. "That was fun."

It took them all night to get to the dump, rummage through it for treasures, and get back to their warehouse. The sky was just becoming gray when they got back, their arms aching with their cargo, and their legs aching from the all night walk. They trudged up the stairs, dropped their items on the workshop floor, and then went up the stairs to their home. They all collapsed onto their bed and slept until well past noon.

Despite orchestrating adventures and projects for them, the kids still begged to go to the cargo bay. So, when a messenger came asking for Phoebe to come to doctor someone who he claimed was unable to make it to her, she agreed. She sent the messenger on before them, and then sat her kids down.

"Do we take things that belong to other people?" she asked them.

All four of them shook their heads. "We only take things that others have discarded," Aries said. She smiled, when he was little, he was the one she had to repeat that to the most.

"Do we accept things that have been taken from other people?" She hoped they knew the right answer.

"What's the difference between that and taking something from someone?" Arcos asked.

"Because we didn't take it," Aries replied. "So we aren't thieves."

"It makes you an accomplice," Ailurosa said, "so it is the same thing."

"Yes," Phoebe nodded at each of them. "It is just as bad as if you took it."

"And we're good!" Medusa announced. "Because the world needs more kindness."

Phoebe smiled, reassured that some of her attempted teaching had sunk in. "Yes," she said. "Let's go."

The kids waited for her as they traveled the rooftops until they saw their playmates in the distance, and then left her in their wake as they sped up to meet them. Phoebe could keep up with them a little better than she could in the beginning, but she would not be able to catch them if they chose to loose her.

She was all business when she emerged from the fire escape, her messenger bag on her shoulder. Chategris was waiting for her, his chest bare in the summer heat. "Where is my patient?" she asked.

"What, no bonjour?" he asked.

"Bonjour," Phoebe said without feeling. "Where is my patient? If he couldn't make it to me, he must be very hurt."

"Oh," Chategris put his arm around her shoulder, and lead her into the cargo bay, "she is hurt."

Phoebe moved out of his grip. "She?"

"Oui," Chategris lead her to a far corner of the bay, her emergency room had long been dismantled. "She is. Perhaps you can help." He didn't sound very concerned.

Laying in the corner was a ferret woman, her clothes torn to pieces on her body, chunks of her fur torn out, fur that was still on her was clumping together with clotting blood. Phoebe gasped and dropped down to her, putting her hand on her cheek. The ferret turned her long neck toward her, her black eyes filled with fear. "What happened here?"

 

"There was a fight," Chategris told her. "She lost."

"She lost..." Phoebe was having trouble comprehending. 

"Oui," Chategris said. "But I like her," he waved his hand at her dismissively. "You can fix her, non?"

She turned to Chategris and glared at him, "What happened to the person who did this to her?"

He laughed, "She has a mouth full of fur."

"If she'd kept her mouth shut, then maybe she'd be in better shape." The white lop-eared bunny, the one who had given her the mug of tea that morning she'd stayed at the bay, sauntered up and leaned against Chategris. Her mouth still had blood on it, her large front teeth a pale pink. 

Phoebe turned away from them, to look back at the ferret. "She is not a robot," she said, ignoring the last part of the conversation. "I am not a mechanic, I do not fix people."

"Ah, Medicienne," Chategris said, bending down next to her, almost pushing the bunny away from him, "I know you will do the best that you can." His hazel eyes looked at her with that intense, eating look that made her feel like her skin was crawling.

"Then go away," she said hotly, "and let me work." She felt his breath on the side of her face and neck, but then she was left alone to deal with her patient.

***

"Huh."

"Hah!"

"Rehwr!"

"Thhhhsssss."

Phoebe looked up from the notebook in which she'd been writing, a birthday present from Ailurosa, judiciously erased of all the pencil marks of the math student it once belonged to make it empty again. The four of her children were play fighting, arms, legs, and tails being swung and avoided. I have to do a better job of supervising them at the cargo bay, she thought, putting her pencil down and standing up.

"Let's play Catch the Monkey!" she called.

They stopped their fight and cheered, all running to the workout area. "How many warm ups do we get before we start timing?"

Phoebe pretended to give it a lot of thought. "Two," she said. "Sound good?"

Four heads nodded in agreement.

She stood in the middle of the area, her feet shoulder width apart, her arms at her sides. Each of the children stood at the four cardinal directions, where the edge of the room would have been if it was separated from the rest of the floor. "Ready," she said. "Set. Go!"

All four mutants rushed at her as she ran to the vaulting horse and jumped to the rafters. Each of them took different positions trying to catch her, Ailurosa and Medusa and headed up the rafters after her, and Arcos and Aries following on the floor for when she came down. She twisted and flipped and vaulted and swung, sometimes on the floor, sometimes near the ceiling, and sometimes somewhere in between, while the four young ones tried to catch her.

When she had first thought up the game, she had done so out of desperation. Medusa was teething, her fangs were coming in. She cried, a pathetic sound, "Mama, make the hurt stop, make the hurt stop." Phoebe had no idea how to make it stop, other than giving her ice in a bag to chew. Her gums were a livid red, and she could see the sharp points just underneath the surface of the gum. 

"Let's play Catch the Monkey," she had said on that day, her voice slightly manic. "I'll be the monkey and you try to catch me." 

And so the game had been born. She had grossly underestimated how quick and how strong her children were, for even as little as they were at the time, they caught her much more easily than she would have guessed. As they had grown up, they had only gotten stronger and quicker, and they had also developed a strategy.

The two girls would head to the rafters to drive Phoebe down the floor, where the boys had a better chance at catching her. Phoebe's strong suit was in the air, not floor exercises, so her speed decreased dramatically when on the ground. Once on the ground, the girls would stay up the rafters and follow her in an attempt to close any gaps that would give her a chance to get back up in the air again.

They had become so good at it, that Phoebe began to time them, in an attempt to help her get better. Loosing after a minute or two was getting old. Her strategy became solely evasive, look for holes in their formation and jump, slide, skip, flip, run through them. She had gotten pretty good at finding holes. 

Her best time was one hour and forty two minutes. Her worst was 2 minutes, 17 seconds.

Aries, at 10 years old, had begun to work on mechanical things, and with wood. His carpentry skills were impressive; he re-framed the door to their floor, made a new set of dining chairs for them from bits and pieces of other chairs they found dumpster diving, made a bed frame for their double mattress, and when he realized that it needed something to keep the mattress from sagging, he built a box spring.

Then, while shopping one day, they found a twin mattress, and he said he wanted to take it home.

Phoebe's heart sank and her throat tightened. "Why?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.

"Because," he looked away from her, "I want to sleep in my own bed."

"What'd you want to do that for?" Medusa asked, slithering out of a dumpster, holding two expired canisters of coffee.

"Because," Aries voice was soft, "just...because."

Phoebe took in a deep breath to keep tears from her eyes. "Of course we can take it home, Lamb's Ear," she said. 

Aries looked up at her and smiled. She noticed that his horns were long enough that they had begun to develop some curvature to them and he did not have to look up very high at her any longer. One more growth spurt, and he'd be taller than her. 

"And maybe you shouldn't call me Lamb's Ear anymore," he said.

She took another deep breath. "OK."

After that, he began to frame himself a bedroom. She quietly impressed and dismayed at the wonderful progress he made. Watching the framing come up, the building of the walls from discarded pallets, the door being put mended from the hole that was in it when they found it and being placed in the door frame. He made himself a bed frame and box spring. He would still end up in her bed with the others, but as the year went on, he would come to her room less and less, until he didn't come at all. 

Ailurosa asked him to make her a bedroom, which he did. Arcos was not to be left out, and even Medusa, who did not particularly crave a bed of her own, insisted on a bedroom. Sheets, pillows, and blankets became a prime look out item on their shopping trips, and Phoebe began to sew together bits of material from discarded clothes to make quilts for them. The warehouse floor began to look more and more like a house, with spaces divided off by walls and doors, so that her own sleeping space needed only one wall and a doorway to become a room. So for their birthday, Aries framed her one, and the children painted it a pale blue and put a juniper branch above the door.

Somehow the Grey Cats found out when their birthday was (Phoebe strongly suspected Crevan had told Chategris, and that Ailurosa had told Crevan), and she was graced with a visit from Chategris and his left and right hand, Razz and the rabbit that had been with him the first time she'd met them, whose name she now knew was Klashtooth. She didn't even bother to ask how he got that name. 

"Bon Anniversaire, ma petite Medicienne," he said, swinging in from the garden window, apparently not bothering to get off the roof of the building to take the stairs. "I come to you on your birthday, since you will only come to me when someone is hurt."

Crevan and several of his cohorts jumped in after the adults. They were now firmly teenagers, looking more like adults every time she saw them. He made a beeline to Ailurosa, and swished her tail slowly from side to side and smiled broadly at his approach.

Chategris, Razz, and Klashtooth saw her gaze follow him, and then come back to them. "They grow up so fast, n'est pas?" Chategris grinned.

Phoebe chose not to answer. "Our birthday is the only thing that brings you here? Usually it is something much more pressing."

"I cannot come to visit a friend?" he asked. She motioned for the three men to sit down, and they did "I have brought you a birthday present." He motioned to Razz, who stood up and took a small package out of his shirt. "For you," Chategris nodded toward her.

Phoebe moved a strand of honey colored hair from her face and took the package. It was obviously a book, and a stray thought made her smile, it's on entomology. But she opened it, she saw that it wasn't, it was a copy of Aeneid. And it was new.

"You stole this," she said flatly.

"I did not," Chategris looked at Razz, then at Klashtooth. "You think I cannot come by anything honestly?"

"No," Phoebe didn't even hesitate to answer.

"Ah, I am offended, ma petite." He put his hand to his chest and gave her a pouty face. "I asked for it for payment for a job."

"The job was illegal," she said, holding the book out to him.

"Getting paid for work well done is not illegal," he said, motioning for her to keep the book. "Take it."

Phoebe looked at the book, it had an orange cover and gold edging. In gold inlay it read The Aeneid in fancy script. She still had an uneasy feeling about it, but the book was beautiful. She liked the Aeneid. "Thank you," she said cautiously. "It was very kind of you."

"You do not ask for anything, Medicienne," Chategris motioned for her to sit down at her own table as if he owned it. She remained standing. "I have to guess what you want."

"I don't want for anything," she told him. "I have everything I need."

Chategris looked around doubtfully. "Ah, oui, I can see."

Ailurosa came over with Crevan at her side. "Look what I got for our birthday," she said, holding up a jug of milk. 

"A perfect birthday present," Phoebe said, smiling at Crevan.

He beamed a smile back at her, and then Ailurosa.

"I will stay until the morning and give you a perfect birthday present," Chategris purred.

The comment took Phoebe by surprise. It had been so long since someone had spoken in such a way to her, that she couldn't think of a reply. "Don't you have things to do?"

Chategris chuckled, "Always, mon amie." He stood up and motioned for his crew to leave.

"Can we go with them, Mama," Ailurosa asked, "it's been so long since we've played."

"No," the words almost came out before Ailurosa had finished saying them. "But," she tried to soften it, "Crevan and his friends are welcome to come here whenever they can."

"I'll come back soon," Crevan told her quietly, "Happy birthday."

Ailurosa swished her tail. "Thanks."

"You don't have to come," Aries said. "We can go on our own, we how to get there."

"No," she answered him faster than she meant to. "You're not old enough."

"How old is old enough?" Ailurosa asked.

"13," Phoebe told her. "You can go on your own when you're 13."


	7. Chapter 7

The summer of their 12th year was a particularly hot one. The temperature rose in small increments each day, no stop seeming to be in sight, as the day for their birthday, the day their new life began together, approached.

The year had been a busy one for Phoebe. Crevan and his friends came over on a regular basis, especially when the weather began to get hot. The children would piddle in the workshop below until it became too hot to work and then come up and lounge in the living room watching TV. She would put them to work in the early mornings, the only time that they could garden with any kind of comfortablity, weeding and digging and splitting and cutting. The juniper bush had sections of it die off from the heat, and Phoebe worked especially hard to keep it alive.

She meditated a lot that summer. Meditating was still, it got her mind off of the awful heat, and it was a great way to trick the kids into thinking she was occupied so she could eavesdrop on them.

She loved to eavesdrop on them! Sometimes she would even sneak to the middle of the stairs and listen as they talked in the workshop. They talked about what they were working on, what they liked and didn't like, the latest music, or movie, or movie star. They spoke like little grown ups, and Phoebe had to remind herself more than once that grown ups is what they were becoming.

One afternoon her brood and their friends gathered around the TV to watch the VHS tape of Harry Potter and Sorcerer's Stone they'd found. ("Look, Mama!" Medusa had said, "It's brand new, still in the packaging with the price tag on and everything!") Her kids had waited until their friends arrived to watch it together. They were riveted to the screen, but Phoebe walked away after only 15 minutes. The book was better, she thought, and she hadn't thought the book was all that great. Rowling stole too much from Tolkien. Now, when they found the VHS of Fellowship of the Ring...

She went to her little yoga floor at the opposite end of the house, sounds of little wizards echoing through the rafters, and began to stretch. She noticed that her yoga practice was much longer these days, the stretching eased her muscles which seemed to ache a little bit more after a vigorous game of Catch The Monkey than they used to. She sat down in the lotus position, placed her hands on her knees, and began to breathe. The sounds of the outside world began to fade away, and she was alone with just herself.

Her voice echoed in her head, as it always did in this stage of her meditations. Today the words were lazy, almost slurred from the heat of the day. Cut some juniper, the unbidden thought told her. She hadn't cut any recently for fear of stressing the plant. She would cut some when she was done. Consider the floor, said the unbidden thought.

Consider the floor? What a silly thing to think. For the first time ever, after decades of hearing this voice of hers tell her to do things, she answered it. "What does that mean?"

Consider the floor, the unbidden thought said again.

"It's just a floor," Phoebe answered in her head. "We made it ourselves. We gathered the wood from a construction site. We sanded it smooth so we wouldn't get splinters when we did our floor exercises. We rubbed it with the only mineral oil could find until it shone like a mirror, and smelled the entire floor with baby smell."

Consider the floor, the unbidden thought said once more.

Phoebe brought a picture of the floor up in her mind. It materialized slowly in front of her inner vision, as did her knees below her. From her seat, she saw lines emanating from her into all directions. They looked red, and then they were blue, and then gold, and then white. Looking at them all around, her eyes fell on one, and the unbidden thought said, That one.

She touched it with a finger, and it felt very much like a soft fishing line. She followed it with her eyes, and it seemed to twist and turn in her vision, until it disappeared through the outer wall of the warehouse.

Follow it, the unbidden thought said.

"But it goes out the wall," Phoebe protested. "I can't follow it past there."

Follow it.

She she stood up, and began to walk along side of the line. It began to glow white, and stayed that color, so bright that everything around her faded away to darkness, so there was only she and line. She would touch it occasionally, and it almost made a sound, like a piece of a tune she didn't recognize. The smell around her changed into the warm smell of nasty public toilet, so that she looked up, to find herself in dark tunnel.

The light from the line, which she held in her hand, faded, and she could see she was in a sewage tube. She could hear the drip, drip, drip, of distant water, and the warm smell came at her in waves as air moved through the tunnel. She walked down it, noting that her feet made no sound when she touched the wet cement. In the distance, she heard a deep voice, accented. What was the accent? The words were spoken in a staccato, but she couldn't make them out. They carried on the breezes that came down the tunnel, as if carried by the smell.

"Mama," she opened her eyes, to see Ailurosa looking at her with a concerned expression. 

The abrupt return to reality made her head spin, so she had to blink several times to steady her head. The smell of the sewage disappeared, the coolness of underground was replaced immediately by the 90 degree heat of New York City on this summer day. The deep voice was gone.

"Mama," Ailurosa put her hand on Phoebe's shoulder, "are you OK?" 

"I'm fine, Kitty Cat," she said, stretching her legs out in front of her. "I was just startled that's all. Go and watch your movie."

The children behind her looked concerned, Crevan and his friends hanging in the back. "The movie's over, Mama," Arcos said, putting his hand Ailurosa's back. "You've been meditating for hours."

***

It is a well known fact that crime skyrockets when the heat maintains 90 degrees for over a week. That statistic was apparently no different for the mutants who resided in NYC, for Phoebe had more patients to deal with, and a slew of nastier injuries, than the past three years combined. 

What made her most angry, though, was they were doing it to themselves.

At least if The Grey Cats were fighting some other gang, she could feel sorry for their casualties and injuries. Infighting rankled her.

"This is a waste of my time," she muttered.

"Then leave him," Klashtooth said. "He doesn't mean anything."

Just as Chategris seemed to go nowhere without accompaniment, usually Razz or Klashtooth, so Phoebe was always in attendance by one of the three of them when she was at the cargo bay. She wasn't entirely sure, even after almost three years, why that was, but she chose to think it was for her safety. Her safety from what, she hadn't decided on yet.

"I can't just leave him," she huffed. Her own patience was wearing thin, she'd been at this for hours. "Can't you all get hurt by someone else instead yourselves?"

"Do you have someone in mind?" Klashtooth asked, his own voice on edge.

Phoebe, wearing shorts and a tank top, wiped sweat from her eyes with her shoulder. "Who do you normally fight?"

Klashtooth chuckled. "Whoever stands in our way."

Phoebe finished up with her patient, and told him to rest and stop being stupid. The Grey Cats were very good at deflecting her questions, even though she'd been able to glean a great deal of information from them, they stopped short on letting her know too much about the outside world. She knew there were other mutants out there, how did they live? Were they in gangs like this one? Did they live all alone? Did they have someone to take care of them? Often times, when she felt this way, she would think of the other mutants in the cells with her all those years ago, and wonder what happened to them all. Did they wonder what happened to her and the kids?

Chategris came over, and motioned with his head that Klashtooth was relieved of his babysitting. He was shirtless, the hair on his rather impressive chest damp from sweat. He held out his hand to help Phoebe up. She took his paw, tired from the heat and the tedious work of people patching. He looked her up and down appreciatively, and she was so hot she didn't even care. "You look overheated," he said slowly.

"It's hard not to be overheated in here," she snapped. "It must be 110 degrees with all these people. Those fans don't cut it. You need to steal an air conditioner or two."

Chategris laughed tiredly. "You, who will not take a gift taken from someone else, tells me to steal an air conditioner."

"The heat makes people crazy," she sighed.

"Come," still holding her hand, he lead her to the side of the bay, "I have already stolen an air conditioner."

Phoebe was too hot and too tired to argue. She let him lead her to a small room, which may have once been an office. Opening the door, two mutants, both dogs, were in a compromising position. Phoebe turned around quickly, but Chategris did not let of her hand.

"Sortez!" he growled.

The two of them scampered out of the chair, grabbing clothes, and running by Phoebe without look at her.

Chategris lead her in the cool room, and closed the door. The room was not cold, but the coolness of the loud air conditioner tingled the tips of her ears and her toes where they peeked out of her sandals. "Ahhh," she closed her eyes and put her head back.

"You see," he said, "I am not all bad."

Phoebe sank into a chair by the door, leaving the previously occupied one for Chategris. "I never said you were all bad," she replied.

"You do not agree with my business dealings," he said.

"Because they aren't business dealings," she told him. "Stealing, extortion, assault, battery, and attempted murder are not business dealings."

"You forgot successful murders," he added.

She opened her eyes and glared at him. 

His pupils were round with the lack of light, he blinked his hazel eyes slowly. "You do not understand the nature of my business," he said in French.

"I understand it fine," she said. "I do not agree with it."

"There is a place in Brooklyn," he said, leaning over his long body to the small fridge at the side of the room and opening it up. "Flatbrush, you know this place?"

Phoebe nodded, taking the Coke he offered her, "The big Haitian neighborhood."

"Oui," he opened a Budweiser, and took a swig. "I have ties to this place," he nodded.

She nodded back, "Is your family there?"

"I have ties to this place," he said again. "There is a group of people there. They make it difficult sometimes ." He took another drink of his beer. "I have ties to this place, and if I am compensated for helping to make it less difficult, where is the crime in that?" He sounded genuine, as if he was honestly asking the question.

"Because what you do to make it less difficult is illegal," she was quite sure it was, even if he hadn't gone into detail. "Why can't the police handle it?"

Chategris laughed, a little less tiredly than earlier. "The police?" He leaned forward, "The police do nothing, ma Medicienne. The police are useless. We," he clapped his bare chest, "we are not useless."

She didn't say anything, but she looked at him dubiously.

"Do you know what would happen to you if you were out there, on your own, without your children?"

She blushed.

"Do you know how much, even as little children, they protect you because they are monsters?"

"They are not monsters," her ire began to rise again.

"Non, that is where you are mistaken, ma Medicienne. We are all monsters. You," he pointed at her, "are the mother of monsters. It is because of those monsters, us, that you are safe."

Phoebe shook her head, "No," she said vehemently, "no, we don't have to be monsters." She stood up, "Being a monster is a choice, not what you look like."

"You tell that to the monsters out there, ma cherie," he stood up also, towering over her. "Tell that to my people, and see what they do to you." He leaned down, his face close to hers, "Like it or not, we are not humans, ma petite Medicienne. We are freaks, abominations, monsters. Do not forget that."

***

The sun began to set, the temperature getting a few degrees cooler. Phoebe asked for her children to be brought to her. When they came to her, Chategris smiled broadly, "Stay and dance with us, tonight."

"Oh, a dance!" Crevan punched the air.

A dance? They were having a dance in the cargo bay?

"Oh, Mama, please!?"

"But it's so hot," Phoebe almost whined. "And you want to dance?"

"What better way to forget the heat," Chategris bent down closer to her, his voice in her ear, "than to dance it off?" She could hear him purring, "I hear you like to dance."

"And where did you hear that?" she stepped away from him.

He looked at Crevan, and winked. 

Crevan avoided her gaze when she looked at him.

"Please, Mama, please!?"

Later on, when she thought of this day, she thought the heat must have gone to her head, or perhaps she was just tired, or lonely for something other than the little world she had inhabited for so long. Her head was blank of any reason to say no. "Alright," she said. 

The room erupted around her. Chategris picked her up by the waist, and spun her around, and then the music was on, bodies were moving with the beat, and she joined them. She danced as the sun went down and the world went dark. The music enveloped the bay, the smell of animal became stronger as the heat of the space refused to go down with the sun. Bodies moved in ways that no human being could move, and in the back of her mind, Phoebe came to the realization that her own body, through years of honing with contortion, was no match in gracefulness or movement to any of these creatures that danced around her. The movement of the least graceful of these was more feral than one she could ever hope to produce, no matter how much or how well she danced. When she felt body heat too close to her, she would spin away, to enjoy the dancing on her own. Chategris ended up by her more often than not, and more than once she slipped out of his grasp with a laugh, feeling powerful and in control.  
She danced with these mutants, part of her life whether she liked it or not, until the sun came up.

***

The heat of that summer seemed to affect Aries the worst. At least, Phoebe thought it was the heat. He was constantly at odds with his siblings, especially volatile Ailurosa, and when he was not, he was in the workshop working on something. He was amicable when Crevan and his friends were around, even if he and Ailurosa still dueled it out. Crevan was savvy enough to stay out of it, and only subtly take Ailurosa's side.

A meditation session was interrupted by a loud, high pitched hiss, followed by several loud bumps. Opening her eyes, Phoebe saw Aries running at Ailurosa, who had jumped on the kitchen counter. She jumped just before he reached her, easily flying over him as he rammed the counter top. Phoebe leaped up, running across the warehouse floor. As Aries made another run toward his sister, Phoebe managed to reach her, she grabbed Ailurosa's ear, giving it a hard pull. Aries' head was still down, his horns in front of him, curling around his head. With her free hand, she caught his ear also. Twisting it, he came to a quick halt with a yelp.

"What is this?" Phoebe asked. "I have to tweak your ears like little children?" It had been years since she had to employ this form of disciple. "What is the matter?"

"She started it!" Aries pointed at Ailurosa, wincing from Phoebe's pressure on his ear.

"I didn't," Ailurosa twisted in an attempt to get out of Phoebe's grip. She pulled harder on her little triangle of an ear. "He is the one who tried to ram me."

"Stop!" Phoebe thundered, also in a way she hadn't done in years. Both of them froze in position. She let go of their ears, and they each stood up, glaring. "What is going on?"

"She won't help to clean up," Aries said. "She always goes off with Crevan, and leaves the mess for us. I'm tired of it."

"You're the one who makes all the mess," Ailurosa wailed.

"No, I'm not, you help. And you're the only one who doesn't help to clean up!" Aries voice cracked when he spoke.

Ailurosa hissed.

"Stop!" Phoebe yelled again. "To your rooms!"

Ailurosa was gone in a heartbeat, and Aries stomped out and slammed his door. 

Phoebe looked at Arcos and Medusa, "What was that about?"

Arcos shrugged. "They started arguing about cleaning up..." He motioned to Medusa, who had already begun slithering to the window. "We'll be outside."

Phoebe made herself a cup of tea, the expired aspartame giving it a slightly bitter flavor. She had to stir it quite a bit to get the expired powdered creamer to fully disperse. She drank it slowly, taking deep breaths to calm down. She had no doubt that Ailurosa had somewhat provoked Aries, she was good at that, whoever ramming things in the house was not acceptable.

After she finished the tea, she went to Aries door, and knocked on it slightly. Then, she opened it, to find him splayed on his bed, face is his pillow. 

"Go away," he said.

"No," she said firmly. He had never told her to go away before. 

He didn't say anything, so she went to his bed and sat down on it. She admired the craftsmenship of the frame. He had begun to carve into the bedposts and headboard, she couldn't tell what what they would be, but he could see what was in the wood, and was bringing it out. She put her hand on his back, and began to rub it. "Oh, Lamb's Ear..." she crooned.

"Don't call me Lamb's Ear," he said into the pillow.

"Aries," she said, in the same crooning way. "What is the matter? Surely Ailurosa not cleaning up didn't make you that angry."

Her flipped around with such speed and ferocity, that it frightened her, and she jumped slightly. His jaw was thrust forward in anger, his eyes animalistic. "What would you understand?" he huffed.

She was quiet a moment. "Because I've been here the whole time?" she asked it gently. "But I can't read your mind, Aries. You have to tell me what's the matter, or I can't help you."

He sat up and huffed again. "I don't know," he sounded defeated. "She just makes me so...angry. They all make me so angry. Everything makes me angry!" He threw his hands in the air barely missing her. 

"What about everything makes you angry?" Phoebe felt at a loss.

"I don't know," he huffed again. "If I knew, I'd fix it."

Phoebe wracked her brain. She had no antidote for being angry without knowing the cause of the anger, so she grasped at the only thing she could find. "If them not cleaning up after themselves is a problem, would you like to have your own workshop?"

"That's just mine?" he asked.

"Yes," she nodded. "And no one can go in except you."

"Even you?"

Phoebe considered for a moment. "No, I get to come in."

Aries considered for a moment. This surprised her, he was not, by nature, the considering type. "OK," his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. "OK."

She stroked his head in between his horn and his ear. He looked so pathetic. "You could build a car." Did she really say that?

"A car?" His voice was incredulous. "How are we going to get the stuff to build a car?"

"I bet we could find most of we need around here, with all the abandoned vehicles just between us and the cargo bay. And there are mechanic shops all over New York that do not dispose of their parts in the proper manner. Their dumpsters are probably a gold mine."

"When would we drive it, Mama?" He looked disappointed. "Where would we drive it?"

"You could drive it all along the warehouse district. I doubt if some person who is here after dark tells the police that a giant ram boy is driving a vehicle that they'll get much of a consideration." When Aries finally smiled, she went on, "You can drive at night, especially in the smaller places. They don't have such a strong police presence." She opened her arms, and he fell into them, putting his head to her chest like he did when he was little.

"The police aren't good people, are they?" he asked.

"They do the best they can with what they have," she said.

"Then why do you always tell us to never let them see us?"

She had explained this already, she was positive she had, but she did it again anyway. "Because they do not understand. Aries nodded into her breast. "That's because people don't think you're real. They think you are part of a fairy tale. If they saw you, if they saw us, they wouldn't understand. And when people do not understand something, they are afraid of it. When they are afraid of it, they try to get rid of it to make themselves feel safe again."

"Is that what The Grey Cats do?

"Not exactly," she answered. "But I would strongly guess that people do it to them, and this is how they retaliate."

Aries sat up, looking at her he said, "They wouldn't be afraid of you. They wouldn't try to get rid of you. You're like them."

She reached up and put her hand on his cheek. "Oh, Aries," she crooned. "I wish it worked that way."


	8. Chapter 8

Thirteen years came much quicker than Phoebe had originally expected. When it did come, she was quite sure that they were nowhere near old enough to be going anywhere on their own. They were just babies, after all. What is thirteen years, compared to a lifetime? They had plenty of time to go out gallivanting on their own without her supervision.

She hatched a plan to keep them home that night, quite sure they would be bouncing on their toes to go out and about the city by themselves. She would take each of them to their favorite shopping place and let them choose whatever they wanted to take home. They would draw straws to see whose night it was, and then for next five nights, they would hunt for birthday presents.

She was shocked when they readily agreed, and did not mention anything about going out by themselves. Had they forgotten? The lead feeling in Phoebe's stomach did not subside, even as they drew straws to see in what order they would go shopping.

Medusa's day was their actual birthday. She decided she wanted novels, "Grown up novels, not the kids novels we always get." Phoebe didn't keep many the house, for their penchant to give her nightmares. But this was Medusa's choice, so they went to the bookstore, loaded up with novels of every kind. Phoebe intercepted several romance novels, but she suspected a few got through her scrutiny. Even after getting home, however, she never was able to find any. 

Arcos drew the next longest straw. His choice was the dumpsters of Greenwich Village. In The Village they regularly found drawing books that were only filled with a few sketched, leaving most of the pages blank. If Arcos was desperate for paper, they would get used sketchpads and he would draw on the back of used pages. They found discarded oil paint, turpentine, acrylic paint, and painted canvases galore. The canvases only needed to be scraped and painted white to be as good as new.

Ailurosa was next. She wanted the dumpsters of the Upper Eastside. Phoebe wanted to dissuade her, the last time they were there, they had almost gotten caught. The police presence there was huge, of course, to protect the money in the city. However, their dumpsters were filled with clothes of every type, shape, size, and style. Phoebe even got herself two outfits, a pair of svelte jeans and cashmere sweater, and a pair of cargo pants with a cute t-shirt. The t-shirt was obviously a teenage t-shirt, but it fit her. Ailurosa picked five armfuls of clothes, a wardrobe that would last her the rest of her life if she didn't grow.

Aries picked the shortest straw, but Phoebe traded her's with him. He wanted to go to the military dump. While his trip did not yield as many individual items as the others, he seemed more happy with his finds than the others.

Phoebe wanted paper. "Lots and lots of paper," she said. "I haven't been writing poetry anywhere near enough." So they raided the dumpsters of four nearby high schools, amazed at the amount of paper that was not written on. Each of the kids gathered pencils, erasers, and half written in notebooks until their arms could hold no more. Then, when they got home, they all set to work erasing the notes in the notebooks to make the pages usable again.

The trips took up the nights of more than two weeks, with rests in between the very long walks to and from some of the destinations. Just when Phoebe thought that they had forgotten about her promise of independence, Razz showed up at their garden window. 

"You've been invited to a birthday party," he said.

"Who?" Medusa asked. 

"Yours," he said, with what Phoebe thought might be a smile.

"Ours?" the others came to the kitchen area. "You're throwing us a birthday party?"

Razz nodded his head. "Chategris insisted."

"Can we go now, Mama, please?" 

"We can go on our own."

"You said at thirteen we could..."

Phoebe cursed herself for hoping they had for forgotten. "Yes," she sighed. "You can go."

The four of them cheered, and Razz chuckled. 

"You have to go ahead, though," Medusa said, "so we can go on our own."

Razz nodded good naturedly and flung himself out the window.

After ten minutes, her own followed him, whooping on the rooftops as they went.

The warehouse was eerily silent. There didn't seem to be even any noise outside. She got one of her notebooks and began to write, listening to the place in her brain from where the poetry came, from where the knowing came, from where the voice that was hers and not hers came. But nothing came. She listened intently, wrote whatever came to her mind, but it was gibberish, and she tore the paper out of the book, and crumpled it up in frustration.

She went down to the garden, and did some work in it. It didn't need much, a few weeds had popped up, which she quickly dispatched. She turned the compost pile, breaking into a sheen of sweat. She trimmed the juniper bush. She collected some herbs and carried them up to the kitchen. She hung them up to dry, and went to the other end of the floor to meditate. She did for a while, listening to her breathing, and her mind going blank, but only for seconds a time. Finally, she got up, and gave in to the feeling she'd been squelching down since the kids left. She went to follow them.

After a shower, the cold was pleasant on this summer day, she put on a pair of Ailurosa's new shorts and t-shirt, and jumped the rooftops to the cargo bay. There was no one waiting on the roof, and when she jumped down from the fire escape, there was a moment of her being invisible, to be able to look around without anyone having noticed her, for the first time.

Mutants mingled, talked with each other as anyone else would have done from her younger days. They lounged in the summer warmth, men stood cocksure trying to get the attention of women, who stood or sat, sultry against walls and banisters. 

One of them looked up, and with her eyes going wide, exclaimed, "La Medicienne."

Phoebe laughed, she said it with an American accent, and she always thought it sounded silly.

The entire scene around her froze, like she had pressed the pause button on the VCR. Everyone looked at her, as if she were some sort of amazing creature, the only human in a space filled with mutants. 

"Hello," she said, suddenly unsure. "I hope I am not interrupting anything..."

Several of the mutants began to move, a chorus of "No," rising about her. A young man came over to her, slowly, as if she was an animal and he was wary she would attack. "We weren't expecting you until tonight, when someone fetched you, La Medicienne." He said her title with a reverence, and it surprised her. Everyone's demeanor seemed preposterous. Any one of them could tear her to shreds in an instant, and they were standing about staring at her as if she was an apparition.

"I came..." to spy on my kids? That didn't sound good. "I came without being fetched."

"Ah, this is a surprise!" Chategris' voice made its way through the parting crowd, She turned toward it, and saw him coming toward her, the people about him parting like Moses and the Red Sea. He was buttoning his pants, and the beautiful white bunny was trying to hang on his arm. He shoved her away as he reached Phoebe. 

"You say I don't ever come for a social visit," Phoebe said, purposefully keeping her eyes at his face. "So, here I am." She spread her arms, "for a social visit."

Chategris smiled broadly, "Indeed, you are."

There was a moment when neither of them said anything, and the ambient talking of the crowd had not yet started again. Unliking the silence, Phoebe said, "I don't think you've ever shown me around your..." what in the world did you call this kind of thing? "...space."

"It will take a long time to show you all of my...space," he said. "Shall we start from the inside out, or the outside in?"

"I guess we start here and work outward."

He laughed, "Alright then," he switched to French, and put his hand on her back to lead her through the part in the people. "Come, and I will show you my little principality."

He showed her each of the rooms off of the large cargo bay, most of them were set up as game rooms of a type, or small lounges. Mutants were in each one of them, playing cards in one, pool in another, darts in another, and one had an arm wrestling match going on in it. In each room, the people in it stared when Chategris opened the door and announced, "This is the downstairs pool room," or "This is the downstairs darts room." One of the mutants in the arm wrestling match immediately lost when the door opened and he laid eyes on Phoebe. "I win!" shouted his opponent She and Chategris left the room with the looser shouting back, "I wasn't ready!"

"You could use one of those rooms as a medical room," Phoebe thought out loud. "It would be easy to keep clean," she blushed slightly at the admission that the cargo bay was not as clean as she'd like it to be, "and would be a central place to keep your medical supplies."

"Mmmm," was all Chategris said.

At the back of the cargo bay was a large, industrial kitchen, currently in use by several mutants in baking. The smell of cake was unmistakable. 

The very back parking lot was set up almost like a type of adult playground. There were training grounds, with punching bags and dummies, a rope ladder, targets made of a cork-like material. Some people were throwing knives at the dummies and targets, others were punching the bags and dummies. Some were sparing amongst themselves, with weapons and without. Phoebe was mesmerized for a moment at the movements of the fighters, there was a type of elegance in their punches and kicks. It wasn't elegant like dancing, or even gymnastics, but there was a smoothness, a lack of punctuation between moves that she hadn't seen in this venue before.

Her own brood was in a circle around a sparring match between Razz and Crevan. Razz seemed to tower over Crevan, but he was incredibly fast. He shouldn't be able to move like that, she thought, he's too big. Crevan, not slow by any means himself, whipped out of his way, sending a kick toward Razz's knee.

The big lizard grabbed the boy's leg, and swung him around like whirly-dingey, letting him go to crash into the side of the building 

Phoebe gasped, and went to run to him, but Chategris put his paw on her arm, strong and firm, so she wasn't able to move. "He's fine," Chategris said. "He has a lot of potential, that one."

"You did good," Razz laughed, going over to help Crevan up. Young people, though none quite as young as her own young people, cheered and jumped at the performance. "You weren't close enough to kick me though. You have to either get away, or kick, you can't do both."

Then it dawned on Phoebe, "This is a lesson?" she asked in French.

"Oui," Chategris answered. "You don't think we send our young people to fight with no skills, do you?" Phoebe didn't know what to say. She knew that gangs usually had initiations where the young person had to fight to get in, and she assumed that The Grey Cats were the same. "I take care of my people, la Medicienne," he said. "That includes improving their street performance."

The rest of the parking lot was a type of outdoor garage, with vehicles of all kinds in all states of disrepair. She noticed many go-carts, most of them painted with wild designs, were in good condition, better than most of the other automobiles.

The second floor of the building was an open type of dorm, with beds and furniture set up to be some kind of living space. It was large, just as her warehouse floors were, but crammed full of stuff. "This is where most of us stay," was all he said about it, before taking her up another floor, which was situated exactly as the second floor.

The fourth floor was another type of gaming room, but the items in it were of a much better quality. There was a bar at the far end, and tapestries of a type on the wall. The couches and seats were made of leather, and were soft and cushiony. Klashtooth was on a couch with another mutant rabbit, and what looked like brandy in his hand. He looked behind him at the sound of the door being opened, and chuckled when he saw Phoebe come in after Chategris, before turning back to his companion.

The top floor, the fifth, was set up like a hotel hallway. Off the hall were doors, and at both ends of the hallway was a mutant standing like a statue. Chategris lead her down the hallway, toward one of the guards, and Phoebe felt a stab of fear. She was alone up here, with Chategris and two rather large mutants, and who knew she was here? Klashtooth? What good did that do her?

"This is where I reward my people," Chategris said. "Let me show you The Penthouse." He opened the door behind the mutant at the end of the hallway, put his hand on her back, and lead her in. 

She took a breath in, it was as if she'd gone into a different world. The floor was carpeted, it was plush, and soft. There were hangings on the wall, she couldn't tell if they were blankets or if they were actually made to be hung the wall. They were, however, tastefully put up. The furniture was leather, with not a stain or crack in them. The decor was out of a magazine, it was so well put together and luxurious. The space was separated into two sections; a type of sitting room in the front, and a doorway, sans door, leading to a bedroom in the back. "This is my penthouse," he said, his voice low with a purr in it. "Come see," there was a playfulness in his voice. He walked toward the door, looking behind him to see if she was following.

The bedroom was as opulent as the sitting room. He went to his dresser, and took a box off the top of it. He held it out to her, "I have something for you."

Phoebe merely looked at him.

"It is a birthday gift." He motioned to it with his head. "Take it."

As if her body belonged to someone else, she ignored the unbidden thought, Don't take it. Opening it, she beheld a gold necklace, with a large emerald pendant sitting on a satin cushion. It was beautiful. This entire room was beautiful. She had assumed, what had she assumed? That they all lived at the cargo bay, collapsing on the floor at night for a bed, having no personal belongings except what was on their person? How ridiculous, Phoebe, she berated herself. She touched the emerald with the tip of her finger, it was artfully faceted, with a filigree type edge around it. She knew she shouldn't touch it, she knew she shouldn't even be contemplating the thing. But her eyes couldn't leave it, as if a line had been attached from them to the pendent. No, the unbidden thought was loud.

But, it is so beautiful.

It isn't worth it.

Chategris is surrounded by beautiful things. Don't I deserve beautiful things, too?

It isn't worth it.

Phoebe felt a wave of resentment rise within her, resentment at all of her hard work, all of her loneliness, all of her heartache. Why not? 

Because you are better than that.

"You stole this," she said out loud, her voice far away.

Chategris came close to her, she could feel his whiskers on her skin. "I did not," he said, his French seeming to match the purr in his voice perfectly. "I asked to be paid with it."

He asked to be paid with it, the thought made her heart beat fast. "The job was not legal." She knew this, she knew it to be true, but her eyes stayed on the pendant.

"I was paid for work," Chategris said. "That is how work goes, non?"

"Oui," she answered.

Chategris took the necklace out, leaving Phoebe holding an empty box. "I wanted a beautiful necklace, to give to a beautiful woman," he purred.

She finally looked up from the box, to find his face very close to hers. The pupils of his hazel eyes were merely slits, and he was smiling. You can't take this, the unbidden thought told her. "I can't take this," she whispered, her eyes didn't leave his.

You are better than this.

I am worth beautiful things. Chategris isn't. Why am I not to have beautiful things?

You are better than this.

"I got it for you," he said. "Just you. I want you to have it" When she didn't answer, he continued, "Wear it tonight, for the party. If you don't like it, I will take it back." The smile on his face turned predatory.

Don't do it.

"Alright," she whispered. He leaned over her to put it around her neck as she held up her long, honey-blond hair, and he clasped it. As soon as he did, the place where the poetry came from, where the unbidden thoughts came from, where her knowing came from went silent. An angry relief washed through her.

"Ma belle Medicienne," Chategris said softly, moving her hair behind her ear. "I can take good care of you."

His physical touch brought her back from her thoughts with a whoosh, and she took a step back, shivering and feeling her stomach lurch. "We have seen the inside, now we work our out, oui?"

Chategris laughed, "Ah, oui, ma Medicienne." He lead her out through the fire escape at a window in the hall, and to the roof. "My territory," he said. "is farther than you can see."

"In all directions?" she laughed.

"Oui," he said seriously. 

Her laughter died. "Is my warehouse in your territory?" she spoke in the same tone he had.

"Non," he answered.

"Am I in someone else's territory?" she asked.

"Non," he answered, as if she'd asked a stupid question. "Your block of warehouses is haunted. No one wants to venture there."

Phoebe smiled, remembering the noises her children made when they were very young to drive the vagrants away. "You ventured there."

"To see who would grow a garden in a haunted warehouse. Imagine how surprised I was to find you."

"You believe in ghosts?" Phoebe was surprised. 

Chategris' eyes went wide. "My grandmere was a mambo. I do not need to believe. I know." Phoebe's smile must have unsettled him, for he asked, "How do you deal with the hauntings?"

"The ghosts don't bother me," she said. "They only bother people who don't belong there."

Chategris and she jumped the rooftops the far edge of his territory. On a roof a few buildings away stood several figures, she couldn't see if they were mutants or humans. "We go no farther," Chategris said.

"Who are they?" Phoebe pointed.

"No one you need to be worried with," he said, physically turning her around to go back the way they came. 

"Are they from the people you fight with?" she asked.

"Some of them," he said. 

"Why do you fight them?" she asked as they made their way back to the cargo bay. 

"It is not something you need to be worried with, ma Medicienne. I can take good care of you."

"I have no doubt you could," she said, her voice a little tense. "I was just asking why--"

"It is nothing you need to be worried with," Chategris cut her off. Before she could retort, he said, "Enjoy your birthday, ma belle. Do not worry about fighting, or doctoring."

The sun had set when they got back to the cargo bay, to find a table had been set up in the middle of the open room, and on it was a large cake, with five candles on it. "You're here!" her four children were at the table. "We were about to go look for you."

Phoebe came over to them, and Ailurosa's eyes went wide. "Oh, Mama, what a pretty necklace!" 

Phoebe put her hand to her throat to feel the emerald pendent and blushed. "Is it time for cake?" she changed the subject.

"Yes!"

The candles were lit, blown out without a happy birthday song, and the cake cut. As soon as the first slice had been given to Phoebe, the music started, and small colored lights began to blink, and the club feel started. She had to work to eat her cake slowly. She wanted to savor it, but she also wanted to dance. The cake tasted divine, but it had been quite a while since she'd had cake, so it could have been a boxed piece of nastiness, and she doubted she would have known. 

Licking the last of the frosting from her lips, and sucking her teeth, she made her way to the middle of the room where the dancing was happening. She moved her body to the beat, closing her eyes and seeing only the blinking colors of lights until all thought left her, all care left her heart, and all there was was the music and dancing thumping through her body. She was unaware of how much time had passed when thought would return, and she'd feel the vibration in her ribcage from the deep bass, the drip of sweat down her back, or down her jaw, the feel of her hair stuck to her, the smell of sweat and animal filling her nostrils like a spiritual elixir. Then, time would slip away again, and there would be a blessed nothingness. 

She was slightly aware of dancing with her children at various times in the night, their bodies moving sensuously to the music. She had the stray thought that they shouldn't be able to move like that, they were much too young to move like that, but then the music would take her over again.

Chategris was by her almost the entire night. He would also weave in and out of her consciousness, until she was brought back to full awareness by fur on her neck, tickling her. His hands were firmly on her waist, and she was surprised to find her hands on his shoulders. "Come to bed with me," he said. 

She shuddered at the thought, and tried to step away from him. He mistook the shudder, an licked the side of neck slowly up to her ear. His tongue was rough, like a cat's, and dry. She gagged, "No," she pushed away from him. He tightened his grip around her and pulled her toward him, and panic seized her. "No!" she thundered, grabbing the fur on his neck and pulling him away from her.

The move surprised him enough that he let go of her, and she went sprawling in front of him. In a moment, a wall of bodies was in front of her, and over the music she heard a growl, huff, and two distinctly different hisses. 

Chategris growled loudly and barred his teeth, taking a stance that indicated he was about to leap at the youngsters in front of him.

All panic left Phoebe as she leaped up. All four of her children were taller than she was now, and she shoved between two of them so she could confront the leader of The Grey Cats. Standing ahead of them, she fumed, "You need to be aware of whose children you threaten, Chategris."

The large, gray cat looked at her for a moment, his countenance unchanged.

"If you ever threaten any of my children, again, you will regret it," she said. "When you need me again, and you will need me again, Chategris, make no bones about that, I will leave you to bleed to death while you watch me tend to everyone around you." Her voice was horse with the vehemence with she spit out the words.

Chategris stood up and straitened his shoulders. "Oh, and this from the one who wants for nothing, who has everything she needs." He waved his hand dismissively, "You cannot even accept a gift when it is place upon you," he said in French. 

Anger flamed up Phoebe anew, she would show him about accepting gifts! She reached for the pendant at her collarbone, and tore the necklace from her neck. It hurt with the pressure, and the sweat made her skin sting. She threw it down at his feet.

He let out a sound in between a sigh and a hiss. "Bon Anniversaire, ma petite Medicienne." And then English he said, "I hope you enjoyed your birthday," before turning from them and walking off.

She turned, facing her children, "It is time to go home," she said quietly. She walked through them, but a moment later, she felt Medusa scoop her up in a coil around her body, and carry her out of the bay with a speed she couldn't hope to obtain. In a moment, they were on the roof, Phoebe still firmly in Medusa's grasp, and they were jumping roof tops.

"You can put me down, Curly Que," she said, "I can go on my own."

They paused and Medusa slowly uncoiled from around her mother. "Are you alright."

Phoebe put her hands out at her sides and smiled. "Just fine, see?"

The four of them regarded her a moment, before they began to go home again.

When they got to their block of warehouses, Phoebe got off the roofs to walk on the sidewalk. She was struck by how much darker it was on the ground than on the top of of the buildings.

"Are you alright?" Arcos called.

"Yes," she assured him. "I just wanted to walk on the ground." All four of them came down to accompany her. "It gives you a different perspective," she said.

The kids looked around them. "Yeah," Ailurosa said, "it looks way different down here at night."

They passed the outer wall of the garden plot, now so thick with ivy on the walls that nothing was visible from outside. The smell of lavender, rosemary, and other flowers and herbs that were hard to identify when mixed with everything else, wafted though the ivy. 

"I didn't know it smelled so good down here," Medusa said. "It doesn't smell like this during the day."

"I didn't know it either," Phoebe said, "maybe it has something to do with the change in temperature."

They walked up the stairs, into their top floor home, and each went their separate ways to collapse into their beds with a wave of "Good night,"s all the way around.

Phoebe fell into her bed, sprawled on her stomach, and fought back disgust. How could Chategris even think she would want to be with a man like him? 

And when had she stopped thinking of him as freak, and started thinking of him as a man?

She'd just fallen asleep when a warm body crawled into bed with her. The soft fur indicated Ailurosa. Of the four children, she was the smallest, but still a few inches taller than Phoebe. Phoebe smiled in her sleep, being taller than she was no great feat. 

"Mama," Ailurosa said as she settled down next to her. "We're you scared tonight?"

"Yes," Phoebe answered honestly.

"I was too." After a period of silence, Ailurosa said, "I don't think Chategris is a very good person."

"I don't think it has to do with being a good or bad person," Phoebe said sleepily. "We are all good and bad people. It is the culmination of our decisions that matter. Is the choice one is about to make a good one or bad one?"

"How can Chategris be good?"

Phoebe sighed, not expecting to have a conversation like this so soon. "He takes care of his people," she said, "when they would have nothing else. They have a place to go, and people who belong to them. He makes sure they have food to eat, and are protected and cared for."

"I think he injures his people," Ailurosa's voice was very soft.

"I am quite sure he does," Phoebe agreed.

"Sometimes, when Crevan comes over, he is hurt." Phoebe stayed silent, waiting for Ailurosa to continue. "He doesn't want to tell you, because he doesn't want you to get mad at Chategris. I think Chategris does it to him. Razz said he was on the fast track to the top floor. I don't know what that means, but it seems to mean you get hurt more than others."

Phoebe wished it was yesterday, when she did not know what it meant either.

"I give him some of your medicines," Ailurosa went on. "I try to give him the right ones."

"Good," Phoebe said.

"I've been reading your books on it," Ailurosa said, "so I know what to do."

"You're a smart girl," Phoebe wrapped her arms around her, tears coming to her eyes. How had she been so blessed with such a wonderful girl to be hers?

"Why do you help Chategris?"

Phoebe thought for a moment. "If I didn't help him, I couldn't help any of his people, could I?"   
Ailurosa shook her head into Phoebe's shoulder. "I would help the people that he hurts if I knew who they were and they asked," she said. "It isn't right not to help someone when you can, especially when they ask."

Ailurosa didn't answer, and soon her breathing became steady and shallow. Phoebe squeezed her and kissed her head, before falling asleep herself.


	9. Chapter 9

The winter of their 13th year was a brutal one. In the Autumn, they usually went out and gathered wood from the tree pruning from throughout the city. The trees in their own block were heavily pruned by them, and cut up for firewood. They had an old drum they put in the middle of the top floor, and would burn their wood there. Aries had made a type of chimney for the smoke to escape, but the ceiling of the warehouse always had a layer of smoke covering it. This year, however, it looked like they would run out of wood before the winter was over, and they weren't sure what they would do when that happened. They tried to conserve their fuel, but with the bitter cold, it was hard.

Chategris' people came to her with increasing frequency for issues with frostbite. Most were mild, a few were moderate. She'd not come across anything serious, thankfully. The spat between she and Chategris on her birthday was over and done with. The day after the party, Crevan had shown up with a box of left over cake. Along with the cake was the emerald pendant and broken chain she'd yanked off of her neck. There was note next to it that read in French, "Ma chere Medicienne, You forgot your gift when you left last night. I thoroughly enjoyed your birthday party. Enjoy the cake, Chategris." That was the last of the matter, for everyone acted as if the fight that night had not happened. She put the necklace at the bottom of the chipped vase, thinking it might come in handy for something someday.

They all bundled up in layers of clothes, and Phoebe told her patients to do the same. "Wrap blankets around your feet to keep them warm, if you have to," she told many of them who went shoeless. Medusa had the hardest time of them, her body temperature was partially regulated by the environment. They piled her in shirts and dresses and tied hats to her head. They put many socks on her hands and and tail, and she spent most of the time sitting by the fire drum. Her movements were slow and sluggish. At night, the four of them slept together in Phoebe's bed, like they used to when they were younger, in an effort to keep warm.

The kids fought a great deal that year, all of their nerves on edge from being so cold and stuck indoors. Ailurosa, Arcos, and Aries went out to play in the snow on a semi-regular basis. Medusa stayed by the fire, and Phoebe stayed with her, plying her with hot drinks and hugs. The attention she was giving Medusa made the others jealous, so she had to make a special effort to console them. She was cold too, and often had to stuff down resentment at being so drained emotionally. When they had to go shopping, they took turns staying home with Medusa, massaging her tail and her thin arms in an effort to warm her. 

The winter seemed to drag on, but when spring finally arrived the tension in the warehouse evaporated. Phoebe was so relieved that Medusa was now moving in a more regular way, that when when they found a box of brownie mix at a shopping trip, she decided to make it.

She needed oil and eggs, neither of which were available. They found a discarded box of individual packages of apple sauce that would work as a substitute for the oil, but the eggs eluded them. It was almost a month before Aries came running in one day, on their way home from an independent visit to the bay.

"Mama!" he came swinging in the garden window. "Pigeons!"

"Yes," Phoebe said, her brow furrowed. "The city is filled with pigeons."

"We can use pigeon eggs for the brownies," he said. 

"Where are we going to find pigeon eggs?" Phoebe asked. "I don't think I've ever seen a pigeon nest!"

"Medusa and I will follow some," Ailurosa said. "They go to roost in the evening."

"Is that what it's called?" Aries asked, "Roosting?"

Ailurosa shot him a nasty glance. "That's what we're calling it," she said.

"Tone of voice," Phoebe warned gently.

"Medusa and I are going to follow them tonight, and we'll report back."

And they did.

When they came back in the middle of the night, they reported that they had found so many pigeon eggs, they could bake 1000 brownies. 

"I ate two of them," Medusa admitted. 

"Were they good?" Phoebe asked.

"Oh yes!"

In the dead of the night, the five of them ventured out to the pigeon haven. Medusa and Ailurosa lead them out of the warehouse district and into the business district, where the buildings got progressively taller and taller. The height was dizzying to Phoebe, but none of the children seemed to be bothered by it. She had a strong suspicion this was not their first time jumping from highrise to highrise. They finally came upon the Balder Building, which towered above those around it.

"You want to go up there?" Phoebe had to work to keep her voice from cracking.

"We don't have to go all the way up," Ailurosa said. "Look at the ledges."

Sure enough, the edges of each floor were jammed with pigeon nests in between the windows and the gutters. "How are we going to get there?"

"We climb, Mama," Medusa said.

Getting onto the building was not a problem, all of the buildings were very close to each other. The problem was standing on the ledge. The ledge was more than large enough accommodate even Arcos, however, the lack of a railing was highly disconcerting. In order to get the eggs from the nests, one had to move the bird, which was not readily willing to move, and its mate was loud and flappy in an attempt to get them to go away. None of them attacked, though, they just made a lot of noise. Soon each of them had their bags heavy with little eggs, they made their way home.

About half of the eggs broke on the journey. "We are going to have to come up with a better system," Ailurosa said.

"Aries," Phoebe pointed to her son, "that's your job."

He gave a salute, and headed down the stairs to his private workshop. "I'm on it!"

Phoebe made the box of brownies, using three pigeon eggs as one chicken egg equivalent, and the smell of baking chocolate filled the floor. 

Aries came up from the workshop, his nose in the air. "Are they ready yet?"

"In two minutes," Medusa bounced excitedly.

The timer went off, Phoebe took them brownies out, and laid them on the table. They looked at the pan, their heads surrounding it as steam rose to their nostrils.

"Why aren't we eating it?" Ailurosa asked.

"Because we have to wait for them to cool," Phoebe said trance-like.

"Why?" asked Arcos.

"Because they won't cut the way they are supposed to."

"Why do we need to cut them?" asked Medusa. "Why can't we just eat it like this?"

"Because that's barbaric."

"What's wrong with being barbaric?" Aries asked. "You say we're barbaric all the time."

"That's right," Phoebe looked up from the brownies. "Dig in, kids!"

The pan of brownies lasted about a minute and half before the pan was completely empty.

***

With the warmer weather, the children were gone more and more, going out farther and farther into the city. They came back with treasures galore, very often coming back with large car parts carried between the four of them. Occasionally Crevan and a few of his friends would go with them. She grilled her children then, to make sure they were being honest. They assured her they were, and she felt no reason to not believe them.

If it was in the evening when they had just left, or the early morning before they'd returned home, Phoebe would tend the garden, gather herbs, turn the compost pile, or put her fingers through the juniper bush. With so much alone time, she thought of Aetos often, and what he might have looked like. What would his personality have been like? How would he have fit into the dynamic of their family? What would he have looked like? Would he have stayed the mishmash of parts he was as a baby, or grown into something more palatable to look at?

When the sun had gone down, thoughts would speed through her mind.

Something is going to happen to the children, and I will not know about it.

They don't need me anymore, they can take care of themselves.

They will leave me.

What would they do if they left her? What could they do when they left her? In all the years she had been working with mutants, she had never come across one that was pregnant, and she was quite sure that if someone would end up pregnant, The Grey Cats would have had someone by now. So, they couldn't have a family. Would they find spouses? Their only options were someone from a criminal gang. She didn't want them with someone from a criminal gang. But did she want that they live the rest of their adult lives like she had, hidden from the world, living on garbage and pigeon eggs, lonely and alone? When they left her, what would she do?

The last thought would grip her with an icy hand, so cold she would have to do something vigorous to make it relax its grasp on her.

Sometimes she would gather pigeon eggs, the ledges of the building not scaring her as much any more. Sometimes she would workout in her little gym, trying to remember her old gymnastics routines from her youth in order to give herself something to do. Sometimes she would dance, but would stop after a few songs if the thoughts in her head didn't slow. Sometimes she would do a long yoga routine, and sometimes she try to meditate.

She tried several times to recreate the experience she had before, to bring back the vision of the sewer system. Perhaps she could hear what the voice was saying, or perhaps she could see something that would tell her where the sewer was. When she was not able to do so, she tried to recreate the threads that were emanating from her in all directions. She was only able to bring it up once more, but could not get through any of the walls to follow the threads anywhere.

When the children came home, they would show off their treasures or fill up the cabinets and fridge, and tell her about their night. She would feed them, or they would feed her, and then they would head off to bed, to sleep the rest of the night away, and half way through the morning.

On this particular night, Ailurosa hung back. "Mama," she said. "Do you remember your first kiss."

Phoebe's heart stopped. 

"Yes," she said slowly. "that is usually something one remembers rather clearly."

"Was it with Stephane?"

"Oh, no," Phoebe chuckled. "It was with James Whitaker." She paused, dreading the realization she'd just come to, "I was 13."

"What was it like?"

"It was very nice," Phoebe said. "And awkward. Neither of us really knew what we were doing. You wouldn't think that kissing would be that complicated..."

"No," Ailurosa said. 

"Was is Crevan?" Phoebe tried to make her voice calm.

"Yes," Ailurosa smiled shyly. "It was...more complicated that I thought it would be."

"Did you want him to kiss you?"

"Yes," she said again. "He asked me if he could."

"That was very gentlemanly of him," Phoebe admitted.

"He told me he loved me," Ailurosa's voice was soft and dreamy.

Phoebe wanted to throw up. "Oh? And what did you say?"

"Mama," Ailurosa looked at her, and in a voice that sounded too old to Phoebe, said. "I love him, too." With that, Ailurosa went to her bedroom.

Phoebe went to her own bed, buried her head in her pillow. Children grow up, she told herself. Your job as a parent is to work yourself out of a job. Then she thought bitterly, You're doing an excellent job of that, aren't you? 

***

Phoebe wrote a great deal about the children growing up. The poems she made from her writings were beautiful and bittersweet, and much too personal for her to share with the kids. She meditated on not feeling sorry for herself, on not feeling sorry for her children. She reminded herself that they still spent most of her time with her, just living life. They shopped together, they danced together, they played together, they built things together, and they laughed together.

She saw patients who came to her, she went to the cargo bay and helped those who couldn't make it to her, she tended her garden, and she worked out. She began to read to the children again, a ritual she had dropped a few years ago. They sat around her entranced, the visions of the author dancing through their heads as she read.

One night, Arcos, Aries, and Medusa came home, jumping through the window. "Where is Ailurosa?" Phoebe asked.

"She wanted to stay for a while with her boyfriend," Aries sang. Arcos and Medusa puckered their lips at each other and smacked them.

If Ailurosa had been there, she would have sneered, "At least I have a boyfriend."

But she wasn't, and Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Did she say how long she'd be?"

"She said just a few minutes," Medusa told her.

A few minutes went by. Then a few more. And a few more. A half and hour went by. Then an hour, and Phoebe started to worry. At and hour and half, anger began to creep through her. A few minutes is not an hour and a half. She would have to do something to teach Ailurosa how to tell time. Two weeks of staying home would probably do it.

"You three stay here," she said, "I'm going to the cargo bay."

When she reached the bay, Chategris emerged from the throng of people. "A visit from la Medicienne?"

"I came to get Ailurosa," she told him. "She's past her curfew."

Chategris chuckled, and moved his head to the side, indicating one of his people to find her. A few moments later, Crevan came to them, sans Ailurosa.

"Where is Ailurosa?" Phoebe asked, her anger beginning to turn to fear.

Dread spread over the fox's face. "She went home over an hour ago."

Phoebe felt the color drain from her face. "She's not home, and she's not on the path here."

Chategris visibly tensed, "Spread out," he commanded, "find her."

Several of his people dispersed, including Crevan. "You go that way," Chategris pointed, "don't go past my border."

Phoebe ran as fast as her legs would carry her, "Ailurosa!" she shouted. "Ailurosa, answer me!" But nothing came to her except her own echo, and the sound of the others calling the name of her daughter in the distance. She took to the roof tops in order to get a better view. Each time she saw a figure, her heart leaped, but it was never her daughter, but a homeless person sleeping or rummaging through the garbage. She didn't care that they heard her call for Ailurosa, and they did not seem to care that they heard her.

She saw another figure, and before she could make out the details, she knew who it was. Dread spread from her toes to the top of her head, as she jumped down from the building and to the figure lying on the ground.

It was Ailurosa.

Phoebe dropped to her, "Kitty Cat," she breathed, "Kitty Cat." She took the girl in her arms, and felt something wet and cold. Looking at her hand, she saw a dark, sticky liquid on it. Blood, said the unbidden thought. Her body was covered in curved cuts, each one sticky with blood. Phoebe put her ear to Ailurosa's chest, and heard nothing. 

No, that can't be right.

It is.

She put her fingers on the girl's neck, on her wrists, finally at her thigh. No pulse, no nothing. 

She's gone.

She's gone.

Phoebe heard a noise, an unearthly noise shatter through the air, and realized it was her own voice. After it had stopped, she buried her face in Ailurosa's shoulder, and screamed.

She didn't know how long she screamed before she felt a paw on her shoulder. "Ma cherie," Chategris said, "ma cherie."

Anger burst through her, and she turned to Chategris and screamed wordlessly, holding Ailurosa close to her body.

Chategris looked grim, the people he had sent to look for Ailurosa standing behind him, and then anger spread on his own face. "I swear, ma Medicienne, I swear I will find who did this, and they will pay."

Phoebe moaned, and buried her face in her daughter's shoulder again. She could feel blood congealing on her hands and face, becoming brittle on Ailurosa's fur. She picked her up, struggling slightly to stand, and began to walk toward home.

"Let me help you," Chategris said, reaching for Ailurosa's body.

"Don't touch her," Phoebe seethed. "I'm taking her home."

"At least let one of us come with you," Crevan said.

"No," she breathed. "Leave me alone."

She walked home, on the sidewalk. She had to stop occasionally to rest, laying Ailurosa on her lap, as if she were sleeping. She knew she was being followed by one of The Grey Cats, and she didn't care. She cried, and moaned, and occasionally let out a scream, so that when she was close enough to her warehouse, the other children came out to her.

"Oh no!" Medusa was there first, "what happened to her?"

"Is she OK?" Arcos asked.

Phoebe couldn't answer. She opened her mouth to say something, and only a moan would come out. She tried again, and the same thing happened. Then, she sobbed, pressing the girl closer to her.

"She's dead, isn't she?" Aries asked.

Phoebe turned her head to the sky, and screamed again, the noise resounding her ears. When she was done, she walked passed the other three and into the warehouse. She was aware, as she walked up the stairs, that they were crying behind her, ugly sobbing sounds. She went to the garden window, put Ailurosa over her shoulders like a ermine collar, and climbed down the rope.

She put her down and began to tear up all of the plants on the wall adjacent to the juniper bush. She pulled them up with a fury, and the others joined her, destroying the garden plot that they'd spent years to build. When nothing but earth was left, they got their shovels, and began to dig.

This grave did not take anywhere near the amount of time Aetos' did, despite that it was much bigger. The work of the four them went quickly. As the sun came up, they placed Ailurosa's body, stiff with rigor mortis, into the hole and buried it.

The next day, all four of them cried. And cried some more. They held each other and cried, they were alone and cried. They slept all in her bed, their arms and bodies around each other in order to try to find some comfort.

Crevan came over, and cried with them. He had a gold ring, a small, plain thing. "Can I put with Ailurosa, please?"

"Of course," Phoebe said, tears streaming down her face.

Crevan stayed with them for four days, even sleeping with them in Phoebe's bed, until Chategris sent someone for him to come home. The children's crying decreased, and they began to resume their normal activities, searching for food, finding items to work on and keep their minds busy, and replanting the herbs that they had torn up to bury their sister.

Phoebe did all these things with them with tears constantly streaming down her face. 

Days later, she stole three large chunks of catnip from someone's garden and planted them over Ailurosa's grave.


	10. Chapter 10

Phoebe slept, cried, and ate, in that order. The days went by in a haze, with her dragging her body out of bed to go to the bathroom, or at the urging of her children. Aries spent large amounts of time in his personal workshop, working on various projects. Arcos drew and drew, and painted and painted, so that he had to make frequent trips to Greenwich Village to replenish his supplies. Medusa read, she finished at least a novel a day, so that she, too, had to make frequent visits to the book store.

Chategris sent many things over to her in the weeks that followed, but he never came himself. He sent fine teas, cream, honey, sugar, and chocolate. He sent over potato chips and sodas for the children. He sent over groceries, books, and small trinkets for all of them that would should have made her happy. All it did was made her feel more awful, it punctuated that her Ailurosa was no longer there. 

As the months passed, they each returned to their own beds, starting with Aries, then Arcos, and finally Medusa. At night it was the worst for Phoebe, alone in her bed, as the nights got colder and colder, and the tears would not stop coming.

But eventually, the tears did stop. There were no more left. Her eyes were rough, and red, and her throat always hurt from sobbing, but no more water came from her eyes. That seemed to make her heart even more heavy, so that it made it more difficult to move her body, as if a great stone was tied around her neck.

Each time the children left their warehouse, Phoebe was gripped by terror. Sometimes it would paralyze her, so that she sat still for what seemed like ages, her mind racing. She could not protect them from the world, and that thought was devastating.

She had failed Ailurosa, but she would not fail her other three. She went to the cargo bay, and as Chategris was being fetched, she said, "I want to speak to Razz."

"Razz?" Chategris' voice drifted through the crowd. "You did not come to see me, ma Medicienne?"

"No," Phoebe said flatly. "I want to speak to Razz."

Her tone of voice obviously surprised him, he stopped short, and looked at her cautiously, as Razz came out to the doors of the bay. 

She turned him, her shoulders squared, "I want you to teach my children how to fight."

"What?" Razz looked slightly confused.

"I want you to teach my children how to fight," she repeated. "I've seen you with some of the other young people. You are good at seeing how a person should fight, and you teach them."

"Alright," he said, his voice quick, his face concerned. "I can teach them to fight." Phoebe sighed and relaxed her shoulders, she felt a small weight lifted off of her. "But you should learn, too," he said.

"I don't need to fight," she said. "They do."

"You need to know how to defend yourself, ma cherie," Chategris said. "Do you think no one out there will hurt you because you are human?"

"I don't need to know how to fight," she said again, "But I want you to start teaching my children how to now."

"Alright," he went to the back to find them and start.

Knowing that if Razz was to be busy on Grey Cat business, it would most likely be at night, she sent her brood to him each day just before day break.

"Off with you," she said. "You have training."

"But we trained yesterday for hours," Medusa whined.

"You will train for hours today," Phoebe said vehemently. "And tomorrow, and the next day."

"Seriously?" Arcos rubbed his arms.

"Yes," she hissed. 

Arcos looked t her surprised, "Oh," he said quietly.

"I don't mind," Aries said, heading to the window. "I like it."

When they came home at lunch, she fed them, gave them an hour to do what they wanted, and then made her show them what they'd learned that day. She watched them, made them practice, tweaked their ears when they whined too much. In their gymnasium, she began to formally teach them gymnastics moves. Ailurosa had been the only one who had taken to it, and the act of teaching them made her heart ache horribly, but she felt a burning need for them to know. 

"Mama," Medusa said, "I'm tired."

"Yeah," Aries agreed, "why do we have to learn how to do this? Razz already beat the snot out of us this morning."

"Because you need to know as much as you can to protect yourselves," she said. 

"Don't you think you're going a little overboard," Arcos said.

She turned on him with venom. "I will not always be here to teach you this," she said. "I should have taught it to you years ago. I am not correcting that mistake now."

She had to modify all of the exercises for them. Their body shapes did not allow them to move the way she did, and she realized that aerobatic gymnastics added much more flair to the exercises than she had been aware But she taught them everything she could, bringing all of her knowledge as an all around athlete to bare.

In the mornings, training with Razz, in the afternoons, training with Mama, and in the evenings and night, outings as needed. Their lives fell into this routine, and the only time Phoebe felt any semblance of control was in the afternoons, having the children trapped in the gymnasium, either showing her their new fighting skills, or teaching them movement.

***

When the spring came, she was forced to work in the garden. She wanted to let it go, she wanted to let everything to go wild, she didn't care. But patients still came to see her, and she needed the herbs to help them. She needed the herbs to help the homeless vagrants she saw on her shopping trips. "They have no one else to go to," she said to make herself get out of bed. "They have no doctor. You are their doctor. You are the Medicienne." So she made her medicines, and bandaged mutants up.

Smack in the middle of the day, Crevan and Razz dropped from the roof into her garden. It was a rare and usually emergency occurrence when the light of day shown on one of The Grey Cats in her little kingdom. "You need to get to the bay," Razz said quickly. "Someone needs to be stitched up."

"Let me get my bag and the kids," Phoebe said, heading toward the rope.

"The kids should stay here," Razz said, following her. "It is better if they stay here."

"Why?" Phoebe asked heavily.

"Because it's bad," Crevan said. "We'll stay here with them."

Phoebe grabbed her bag and headed toward the bay. She couldn't get herself to go as fast as she used to, each jump seemed to weigh an extra 100 pounds. When she got there, a man was laid out on pavement in front of the doors. A woman sat with him, and as she got closer, she recognized them as the dog mutants from the room when Chategris had given her the grand tour.

Standing a little away were Chategris and Klashtooth, their faces grim. Klashtooth was holding onto a human. The human's face had been beaten, ugly purple bruises covering it. He looked strangely out of place, a sole human face among a group of animals. What was he doing there? Had one of a rival gang been over the border and been taken to Chategris?

The dog was bleeding profusely all over his body, and when she saw the blood, she went into healer mode. Her mind became focused on only her patient. 

"Take his clothes off," she ordered. The woman next to her began to undress him as Phoebe opened her bag, and then helped. 

The man's body was covered in curved cuts that looked sickening familiar, and she suddenly understood why the human was there. She looked up at him, amazed. "You did this?"

Klashtooth shook him roughly, "He did."

"Can you save my man?" the woman's voice brought her back to her patient. 

She looked down at his naked body, bleeding from all the lacerations, and said, "I don't know. But I will try." She gave her a bottle of antiseptic wash made of calendula, oak, and yarrow. "Pour some of this on all of his wounds." There wouldn't be enough, she was sure, "Do the big ones first."

Without looking up, she said, "I need a needle, and something to sew with...uh..." She looked around, and saw a horse mutant. "Horse hair. And I need someone to pee in a cup."

"Pee in a cup?" someone asked. 

"Yes, urine is antiseptic. I can soak the instruments in it. Pee a little first before you go in the cup." She wasn't sure who 'you' was, they needed to know how to do it right. "And I need some soap, and rags, and hot water."

Everything was provided for her with amazing speed, even the urine. She instructed the woman next to her to wash her hands, as Phoebe washed her own, and then to wash the horse hair with soap and water, and then put it in the cup of urine. Phoebe began cleaning out the wounds and sewing them shut, starting with the largest and deepest and working her way to the smaller ones.

She got lost in the work, her need for focus driving everything else out of her mind. The sun began to go down, and asked for a light. Three flashlights were provided, and she would tell the holders where to shine them. 

"Look," said someone, "her hands are glowing."

Phoebe, she thought to herself, you really have to get outside more if your hands are glowing in the dark.

It was the dark of night when she finished, she had stopped his bleeding, stitched up his wounds, and applied a small compress of garlic and calendula on the larger ones. She looked up at the woman who had been by her man's side the entire time and gave her a tired smile. "I think he will be alright," she said, "but it will take a lot of time."

The woman began to cry, tears falling down her jowls. "I thought he would die, " she said. "Thank you, la Medicienne," she said, "oh thank you, thank you!"

"Don't thank me yet," Phoebe stood up after washing her hands off. "Thank me when he's better."

Still standing by them were Chategris, Klashtooth, and the human. She walked up to them, and looked the human in the face. He was dark and swarthy, his eyes dark brown or black in the night. His nose was large, and his lips thin, his face pot marked. Had they been there the whole time? 

She walked up to him, "Why did you do this? Why did you do this to a little girl?" The question had been plaguing her for months.

He looked at her confused for a moment, then understanding dawned on his face. "These freaks need to die. They're abominations. They don't deserve to live. How can you help them?"

"You killed a little girl, because you thought she was a freak?" Anger welled up her, stinging her eyes, making her pulse pound in her ears. "Who are you to decide who deserves to live or die?"

He spat at her face, his spittle hitting her cheek. "You deserve to die to, helping them." He hissed out the words.

Phoebe took a step toward him and drew back her arm. He smiled at her derisively as she flung her fist as his face. She hit his mouth, just near his cheek, and his head flung backward against Klashtooth with the force of the blow.

"You are the abomination," her voice was very quiet. Her hand hurt where it had made contact with his face. "You took a child's life. You deserve to die."

Chategris took his knife from his waist and held it out to Phoebe, handle first. She took it, and held it up to the human. "Shall I do to you what you did to my daughter?" The human said nothing, but the his cocky attitude had faded into one of fear. She slid the blade against his jaw, drawing a line of blood. "Shall I slash you full of holes and let you bleed to death?" Klashtooth held him forward, offering him to her. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of silver, and looked to her right to see Crevan walking through the people to stand near. His face was sad, and his breath came in deep, loud gulps. Phoebe turned back to the man and saw the blood she'd drawn, then looked down at the knife she held. 

What am I doing? she thought.

She lowered the knife, and offered it back to Chategris. "Let him go," she said. "He knows he's defeated. He will have to live the rest of his life with a scar on his cheek because he was a coward who killed a little girl."

"Let him go?" Chategris took him from Klashtooth and held him close to his face. "I do not think so." With a sudden movement, Chategris buried his teeth into the man's neck, and tore out a chuck of his flesh. Blood spurted out of the wound onto Chategris' gray fur.

Phoebe turned and ran, leaving all of her things at her patient's side. She ran until her lungs hurt, a good half way home. She retched, and then vomited on the street, the sight of Chategris' mouth and bared teeth covered in blood still in her mind. 

She got home, walked up the stairs, and found Razz sitting at the table. "Did he make it?" he asked.

"Yes," Phoebe said softly. "But his attacker didn't."

"Good," Razz stood up, and headed toward the window. "He got what was coming to him."

The words made Phoebe feel empty.

***  
She went back each day to tend to her patient, Toaster, named for his brown fur color, at the cargo bay. It took him three days to regain consciousness, and once he did, she plied with fluids and anything that had iron in it. She boiled rusty nails, made a tea of pine needles, and had someone get a hank of meat from a butcher to make broth.

His woman was always by his side, a sort of sad hound dog look on her canine face. She said her name was, Dezi, and she seemed a very genuine sort of person. "You are like a phoenix," she said when Toaster came to, "making life rise from the ashes."

"A phoenix only raises itself from the ashes," Phoebe tried to explain. But over the days, Dezi would not be convinced. Phoebe told her the legend of the phoenix, how it lived by a well in Asia somewhere, and every few hundred years it would build itself a nest of cinnamon twigs and ignite itself in a funeral pyre. From the ashes of the nest, a new bird would emerge, as beautiful as its parent. It's singing could beguile anyone who heard it, so they would stand still to listen, grow old, and die. If its shadow fell upon you while it was flying it was considered a great fortune, but it did not raise people from the dead.

Whenever she was there, Chategris would encourage her to either learn how to fight, to come and stay with them at the cargo bay. "I can take good care of you," he said.

"I have no doubt you could," she always replied. "But I do not to fight, and I do not want to move."

***

If she was going to be doing this kind of surgery, Phoebe needed surgical gloves. There was no use in trying to shop for them, she had to figure out how to get them new.

The only thing that came to her mind was to steal some.

She went out, in the middle of the day, wandering the open streets of the city. People passed her by, their heads down, paying her no attention. She had forgotten how ordinary she was, that she was a plain, nothing-special-about-her, human being. She wasn't sure if she liked it or not.

She passed a medical products supplier, and then another, and then another. She knew where they all were, she didn't have to look to find them. When she passed each one, she couldn't make herself do anything except pass the store.

You have to do something, Phoebe, she told herself. But exactly what something was, she had no idea. 

She picked an establishment when she saw a truck pulling through the alley next to it around back, and walked passed it three times. She finally took a deep breath, and as casually as she could make herself, walked down the alley.

Turning the corner, she saw two large men emptying out the contents of the back of the truck. She watched them, unable to make her feet come any further.

One of them looked in her direction and stopped what he was doing, and elbowed his workmate. "What're you looking at?" he threw in her direction.

She stepped fully around the corner, and said quietly, "I need surgical gloves."

"Go in and buy some," said the other man.

Her mind went blank, and she shook it to try and come up with a reply. She looked at the plastic covered pallets and licked her lips, then looked back at the men. How was she going to do this?

The first delivery man understood her delimma before his workmate. "You don't have no money for gloves," he stated it as a fact.

Phoebe nodded. 

"Whatcha got to pay for gloves, if you don't have no money?" asked the other one.

She had nothing. All she had was the clothes on her back, nothing of any value. She should have just asked Chategris to get some for her, and then not have to think about where they came from, but she didn't want to ask him for anything. She'd do everything in her power before asking him for anything. She chewed her lip, and both men snickered at her hesitation.

"Get lost, broad," said the first one.

"I'll kiss you for a box of gloves," the words flew out of Phoebe's mouth. 

Both men stopped. "I got something for you kiss for a box of gloves," the first one said.

Phoebe shook her head, "On the mouth. I will kiss you on the mouth for a box."

He waved a hand dismissively in her direction, "Get lost," he said again.

"I'll give you a box of gloves," the second man said. 

The first man looked at his workmate. "You can get a kiss anywhere."

"Not from a woman who looks like that," he muttered. He went over to one of the pallets, tore a hole in the plastic, and pulled out a box of latex gloves. He held it up. 

Phoebe tried not to panic. "You come here," her voice was barely audible. He walked along the back of the building slowly, still holding the box of gloves. "Put the gloves down," she indicated a spot at the corner of the building. 

He did.

She then walked up to him, and straightened her shoulders. You can't get them any other way without stealing them, the thought. This isn't stealing them. He's stealing them. You're exchanging a service for them. "Keep your hands at your sides," she told him. He nodded. Then she reached up and kissed him on his mouth. He pushed into her, his tongue like a slug working its way into her mouth. She kept her part of the bargain, and had to pull away, because he was showing no inclination to do so.

She then grabbed he box of gloves from the ground and ran.

When she got back to the warehouse, she took some of her antiseptic wash and swished her mouth out over and over and over again.

***

Toaster healed well, with no infection in any of his wounds. She left gallons of antiseptic, still steeping to get the essence of the herbs into the water, to wash his stitches three times a day. 

Dezi, a black and white dog with long, soft ears and sad expression, seemed to be doing a good job of caring for Toaster. Phoebe offered to teach her how to heal, or at least make the antiseptic wash, but Dezi refused. "I'm not smart enough to do it," she said.

"You are smart enough to clean Toaster," Phoebe encouraged, "and smart enough to know what a phoenix is."

Dezi just shook her head, her ears swaying gently. 

So Phoebe asked for gallon jugs that weren't milk. "You can never get it all out," she said, "and bacteria will grow in it. Bleach bottles work well." 

Soon the kids were bringing home four bleach bottles each a day, and Phoebe used them to store antiseptic wash. When it was done after three days, the kids took two bottles each with them back to the cargo bay.

She noticed, after she'd sent a few gallons of it, that she was receiving much less patients. Most of her doctoring was dealing with infections, infections that could have been easily prevented if the wound had been taken care of properly. "Guess they're taking care of them properly, now," she said to the warehouse walls.

Having too much time on her hands, she went to the cargo bay to watch the children train.

It was training. She was easy on them in the afternoon compared to what Razz was doing with them. He had several other young people with him, all older than her own, but not by much. Crevan was over to the side with a small group, each of them sparring with a partner.

Kicks flew, fists punched, bodies twisted. Some of them were very flexible, and could use their bodies as weapons, increasing the force of their attacks. Others, like her boys, were not so much, and had to rely on raw strength to get them through. Medusa was fast, blindingly fast, and came upon her sparring partner to wrap them in a coil, which would have crushed a person had they been an enemy.

It made her uncomfortable to watch them, but they were all moving their bodies in a way that was amazing to her. Razz or Crevan would correct their form, to get their attacks to land where they were supposed to. They look like real street fighters, she thought. Then she derided herself, They are street fighters, Phoebe.

They reminded her of when her brothers and cousins would play princesses and knights. When she had time off from competing, and was at home, they would set up a kind of sitting area, where the girls would all sit, being the princesses. The boys, the knights, would then take turns play fighting with each other, and the girls would decide who was the winner of each match. 

She shoved the memory aside, slightly surprised it cropped up. That woman is dead, Phoebe, she told herself. Let her lie in peace.

Razz came over to her, sweat gleaming on his scales in rather dashing fashion. "Come to watch?"

"Yes," she said. "I figure that I ought to make sure what the kids are showing me is correct."

"They tell me you are teaching them gymnastics," he said, leaning on a wall, breathing a little heavy. "Arcos does not seem to be very good at it."

Phoebe looked at her bear, and chuckled. "He isn't," she said quietly.

"It is helping him, though," Razz told her, "he has more of a sense where his body is."

"Good."

'I didn't know you knew gymnastics."

"I made it to the NCAA championships four times." 

"Really?" Razz said, shocked.

She gave him a hard look, "Don't you think I had a life before this one?"

Razz was silent for a moment, "We all had a life before this one."

Phoebe considered him. "When did you become a mutant?"

Razz turned from her and looked at the young people sparring. "I was about their age," he said quietly. "I lived in Albany. I was skipping out on school with some friends, and we saw this man in an alley by himself." He turned back to Phoebe and raised his eyebrows. "Prime target. He was tapping at the wall of a building. We jumped him, it was easy. He thought he was tough, but he wasn't. We took everything he had, including this canister of...stuff." He paused, thinking. "We dared each other to open the canister. We thought it was just bio-waste or something. I finally opened it. Some of the stuff got on me," he said, "it hurt so bad." He swept his body with his arm. "And I turned into this."

"I don't think Razz is a this," Phoebe said gently.

He chuckled derisively. "My mother did. I ran home, it hurt. It hurt so badly, and I didn't know what to do. When I got home, she came out of her bedroom, saw me, and screamed. I tried to explain to her what happened. She grabbed her gun and shot at me. She emptied the gun in my direction."

"Oh, Razz..."

"I have no idea how I didn't get shot. She missed, every bullet. I knew I couldn't live--" he cleared his throat. "My own mother didn't know me, didn't want to know me. I lived on the streets for a long time."

"Is that where you learned to fight like this?"

"When you're a freak of nature and living on the streets at night, you learn pretty quick." He took a breath. "Eventually Chategris found me. And here I am."

Phoebe was at a loss for words. 

"Now I have the honor of teaching your children how to fight," he straightened his shoulders and heading back to the others. "They will be good fighters."

Phoebe knew it was a compliment, but it didn't feel like one.

On her way out, Chategris intercepted her. "You came to see Razz, and not me?" There was an edge to his voice.

"No," she snapped. "I came to watch my children." You don't own me, she wanted to tell him, but she didn't. She didn't want another fight today.

Chategris calmed visibly. "Ah," he nodded. "You should learn to fight, too."

"I don't want to learn to fight," she said tightly.

"I will teach you," Chategris said.

"I don't want to learn how to fight."

"Then stay here."

"I don't want to stay here."

"I can take good care of you--"

Something in her snapped. The weight that was constantly on her turned to fire in her heart. "I don't want you to take care of me! I don't want anyone to take care of me!" Her voice rose with each word until it was a thunderous shout. "I don't want to learn how to fight. I don't want think about fighting. I want my daughter back! Can you give me that?!"

Chategris stood stunned, looking at her.

She turned and left, the heaviness returning with every step toward home.


	11. Chapter 11

She slept for the next three days most of the day, only getting up to see what the kids had learned, and then getting back into bed. The children went shopping at night and stocked the fridge, they went training in the morning, and they did their own things in the afternoon.

They were self-sufficient. They were fourteen, and could take care of themselves. She doubted she could have done so at fourteen. She would wake up at night and think these thoughts, and then fall back to a dreamless sleep.

She woke up one evening wide awake. She could hear Aries below her working on his car. The TV was on. She went to kitchen, and on the table were a pair of black ballet flats. The toes were slightly worn, but otherwise, they were in excellent condition.

Now they're finding me clothes, like I'm a little kid.

She went to put them in their makeshift closet, and a strange thought occurred to her. She pushed the clothes out of the way until she got to the very back. There, the last piece of clothing on the rod, on a wire hanger hung her cocktail gown. It was still a dark blue, the sparkles still set in it. She had cleaned it the best she could, amateurishly sewing the rip in the hem. I wonder if that still fits, she thought.

She took it out and stripped there in front of the closet. She zipped it up in the back. Not only did it fit, it was a little loose. She slipped on the ballet flats and went to the broken mirror near the closet that they had put in for Ailurosa.

She looked...pretty. It certainly wasn't the same woman who had last worn the dress. The woman in the mirror did not have the dark hair, did not have the roundness of youth in her face, was much too thin, her hair was much too long. But this woman, she was pretty in this dress with her worn new ballet flats.

She brushed her hair out, washed her face, and came out of the bathroom to her three children waiting curiously. 

"Oh Mama, you look so nice!" 

"Wow, Mama, where did you get that dress?'

"You see the shoes, they go with it perfect!"

"I am going out," she said.

"In that?" asked Arcos.

"Yes," she said gently.

"Are you going to the cargo bay?" Medusa asked teasingly.

"No," Phoebe answered, heading toward the stairs.

"Then where are you going?" Aries asked.

"I don't know yet," she answered. She turned and looked at them. They all looked at her slightly worried. "You know I love you all very much, don't you?"

They muttered their yeses, confused. 

"Always remember that, alright?"

"We will," they said.

Then Phoebe went down the stairs into the street and walked and walked, and walked. It did not take her long to decide where she was going to go. She knew of a dance club near the water. She had to cross the bridge to get there, a conveniently high location, which she would have to cross again on her way home. She passed a little Asian market, a fancy boutique, and a butcher shop. That's a strange combination, she thought.

She was propositioned once on her way there, once she'd crossed the bridge. She waved the car away, and arrived at the club, and then realized she had no money. She stood on the other side of the street, watching the young men and women go in the door past the bouncer. She saw a man who didn't look like a little kid, but a big kid, maybe in his late twenties. He was alone. She took a deep breath, crossed the street and went up to him. "Get a girl in?" she asked in the sweetest voice she muster.

He looked at her and blinked. He's going to say no, she thought, he's not going to get someone more than 15 years his senior into a nightclub. His eyes traveled up and down her body, and then his face broke into a smile. "Sure!" He slid his arm around her waist. He lead her to the door, paid for them both, and passed the bouncer without showing his ID. A regular, she thought. She'd gotten lucky. Of course, the bouncer didn't ask for her ID either.

With his arm still around her waist, he tried to lead her to the bar, but she slipped out of his grasp, and shook her head. She pointed to the dance floor, and then headed toward it. She didn't care if he followed her or not. She wove through the people until she was firmly on the dance floor, and then she began to move.

He had followed her, and danced with her for a while. Then the crowd separated them, and she danced alone. She danced to every song until her mouth was so dry, she couldn't take it. She went to the bathroom to get a drink of water, a nasty room that smelled of things other than urine and waste. She filled her mouth with a few handfuls of water from the sink, and saw a piece of metal shine underneath it. She bent down and picked up. It was a razor. How convenient, she thought dispassionately, I can make sure I don't mess up. Two ways are better than one. She wrapped it in toilet paper to keep it from cutting her, and tucked it in the bosom of her dress.

She was back on the dance floor, lost in the music. Men, no, she would have called them boys they were so young to her, pawed at her, and she danced out of their way. She was offered drinks, and other, more intimate invitations, all of which she refused. She danced in a way she'd never danced before, sultry and sexy, teasing anyone around her, and then slipping into the throng of dancers. Some of the men sought her out on the dance floor after she'd moved. She teased them, then refused them and danced away. She danced until the club closed at 4am.

On the way out, she got several invitations for a ride to her home, and several invitations to a ride to his home. Again, she refused them all with a polite, "No, thank you." She put her hand to her breast , feeling for the wad of toilet paper. It was still there.

The cool of the almost morning air felt good against her sweaty skin. She closed her eyes and relished it, and the smell of the water, and the sounds of the people around her going home. The sounds of people soon faded as she walked to the bridge. She passed the little Asian market again. An old man was sitting in a gray folding chair outside, next to the door. He was wearing a cardigan, and a little hat on his head.

"Your heart is hurting," he said with a heavy accent.

"You don't know the half of it, buddy," she muttered, her exhilaration gone like the breeze that moved her hair.

"That is not the way to heal it," he pointed to the bridge.

She turned on him, about to tell him to eff off, she was off to do something to heal the hurt. Before she could say anything, he crooked his finger at her, "Come here."

She froze, her mouth opened to speak to tell him off. She felt a wave of cold come over her, then a wave heat, then another one of cold, like the ocean coming and going with waves of different temperature on the sand. She walked over to him.

"Sit," he said.

She couldn't see anywhere to sit, he was in the only chair, so she knelt on the ground next to him.

He took her hands in his. They were warm and wrinkled, rough on the palms from callouses. He leaned close to her face, and said gently, "You are not finished yet. You still have much to do."

"I have nothing to do," she said in a whisper.

"You must heal your head," he said, "then your heart, and then others, and others besides."

Tears came to her eyes, as the warmth in his hands spread up her arms and in to her shoulders. "I don't know how." Loss overcame her, and the tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Of course you know how," the old man said. "You just need to be shown how to know that you know."

Phoebe shook her head, not understanding 

The heat from his hands became hotter and hotter, rising up her arms to her neck, down her shoulders. It hit the top of her head and the middle of her chest at the same time, and she was no longer on the sidewalk, she was no longer anywhere. All there was was heat and light engulfing her entire self. It concentrated at her chest, and she felt as if her heart might burst. Everything she had ever felt, joy, despair, pride, envy, love, hate, fullness, emptiness, nothingness, and everythingness, came bubbling out of her chest like lava, flowing over her and leaving her burned. Red, orange, yellow, golden, and white light all converged in front of her, in the shape of a great, glowing bird, a bird made of flames and emotion. It came at her, screaming so that it encompassed her entire being, and she closed her eyes as it wrapped her in its wings and set her aflame.

Then it was gone. She opened her eyes to see the old man in front of her, still holding her hands in his. "You must heal your head," he let go of her hands and tapped her forehead. "Then your heart," he tapped her just above her breasts. "And then others, and others besides."

Phoebe nodded dumbly. The old man seemed to glow without glowing, the chair glowed without glowing, even the air seemed to glow.

"Go home," he said, his voice still gentle.

Phoebe stood up, and walked home, crossing the bridge. The sun rose over the water, and it was the most beautiful sunrise she'd ever seen. Everything she looked at seemed fresh and new, as if she'd been wearing glasses all of her life that muted the colors. Everything she looked at was amazing, a great wonder that the universe had created in its own imagine, and she could finally see it.

When she got home, the children were up, all sitting at the table. They ran to her and held her, obviously relieved at her return. "You were gone all night," Medusa said, "we were worried."

"I am home now," she said. "I won't be going out like that again."

They released her, and the wad of toilet paper fell through her dress onto the floor. 

Arcos picked it up, "What's this?"

She took it from him mildly. "Nothing," she answered, and threw it in the garbage.

***

Phoebe was awake for all that day, and all that next night. She looked at everything around her slowly, examining it as if she'd never seen it before. The beautifulness of it all struck her that sometimes tears came to her eyes, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, they felt good. Her children were gorgeous to her, every bit of their magnificent selves shown through to her. How could she not have seen it before? 

She left in the wee hours of the morning, leaving her three young ones at home and assuring them she'd be back, she just had an errand to run , back to the little Asian store. The old man wasn't there, so she waited by the store until an old lady, and a middle aged man came to unlock the door.

"Excuse me," she asked them, "where is the older man who sits outside the door? Will he be coming today?"

They both looked at her confused. The old woman said something to the man in another language. The man said to her, "There is no older man who sits outside our door. There never has been."

"He was here yesterday morning," she told him. "On a folding chair. I spoke with him." 

They looked at her sympathetically, the old woman speaking again in that other language that Phoebe couldn't identify as anything but Asian. "I am sorry," the man said again. "You are mistaken."

They opened the door to their little shop to get it ready for the day, and Phoebe turned away to go home. She had wanted to thank the old man, ask his name, see if he needed anything. Now they were telling her there was no old man, never was an old man. She felt slightly crazy, but she said a soft, "Thank you," to the wind and hoped it reached him, whoever and wherever he was.


	12. Chapter 12

The four of them were on their way home in the darkness, their arms laden with plastic bags filled with food. The night had been productive, one of the grocery stores had culled its produce. Much of it was still fine, except for the very top layers, and Phoebe, Arcos, Aries, and Medusa were going to enjoy it for the next few days.

Wait here, the unbidden thought was strong in her head.

"Wait," she held up a hand to halt her children. 

"What is it?" Medusa asked quietly, as all three of the mutants moved into the shadows.

Wait here, it said again.

"I don't know," her mother answered. "We need to wait here."

They waited in the dark, for at least ten minutes. Whenever she moved to leave, the unbidden voice told her, Wait here. The unbidden thought came to her often now, after her encounter with the old man at the Asian shop who wasn't really there and the great fiery bird that had engulfed her. She liked to think of it as one of them speaking to her, even though the voice was her own, yet not her own. 

Her heart beat a little faster, trepidation creeping up her spine with the eerie quiet. She still got afraid, but it wasn't like it was before. It was no longer accompanied by despair or desperation. It was only fear by itself, and tonight it was only a little. 

"How long are we gonna wait here," Aries complained.

"As long as we need to," Phoebe replied.

Aries gave an annoyed huff.

Her children had seen the change in her behavior. She was back to her joyous, playful self, but they had noticed something else, something different about her. She cocked her head to the side often, as if listening to something far away and then she would make a statement or command that she would not allow any of them to veer from.

Eventually, out of the shadows, came a roach man. His head was a cockroach, with large faceted eyes and antennae sprouting out of his head. His body was a round inhuman shape, but the flesh was obviously human. He had arms like a man, but had two extra ones underneath them that were like a roach. "You help-woman," he said in a strange, crackling way. "You help me?"

A mutant had never come up to her anywhere before, save one of Chategris' people, but the appearance of this mutant didn't seem to surprise her. "Yes," she said. "I will help you. Come out." She motioned him to her. Her own children came out of the shadows, and the roach hesitated. "Don't worry," she assured him. "They won't hurt you. They're with me."

The roach came to her, holding out one of its extra arms. A large piece of it just hung limply. 

"We can take care of that," she said gently, "Can you find me something to splint this with please?" she asked her children. They spread out and came back with a wooden dowel and wire coat hanger. She splinted the roach's arm and then she bandaged it with a plastic bag. Before she took her hands off his arm, however, she felt a tingling in the palms of her hands. The tingling grew until it was almost a painful pins and needles. She shook them.

In him, the unbidden voice had said.

She didn't understand, but listened closely.

In him.

Then she understood. She had placed her hands on his leg where the wound was, and the tingling in them swam out of her palms, and into his leg, like tiny ants running from the underside of her palms. She no longer saw everything glowing without glowing unless she worked at it, but as she held the roach man's carapaced arm, she could see her hands surrounded by a light that reminded her very much of the fiery bird that burned away her pain. When she felt the tingling stop, she took her hands away, and stood up. "There," she said. "that should do it."

The roach moved his leg, "Help," he said. "You help-woman, you help me." 

"Yes, have I helped you?"

"Better."

"Good." She smiled at the atrocious looking mutant. "What is your name?"

"Shhhzzz," it sounded like he said.

"Shuzz?" she tried to copy his sound. He moved his head in what she took to be a nod. "Well, Shuzz, most mutants call me The Phoenix, but you can call me whatever you like, as long as it's respectful." She had a playful smile on her mouth.

"Help-woman Phoenix," Shuzz said.

"That works," she put her accoutrements back in her bag. "Be easy on that arm for a while. If it begins to hurt again, come here to this place next week, and I will be here waiting for you."

Shuzz made that movement with his head again.

A thought occurred to her, "And if someone else needs help, send them here also," she told him. 

***

After her encounter with the old man by the Asian shop who wasn't really there, she had gone to check on Toaster. The world still glowed without glowing, and on Toaster's body, she could see that his glow was slashed in the places where his physical body was slashed. Some of the glowing slashes were thicker or longer than others, and she noted those were the spots that been deeper and had more damage than the others. She would tend to them first.

Dezi, as always, was by her side, and Chategris was soon there also. He cocked his head to the side, and regarded her. "You have done something different..." he said.

"No," she said with a smile. "I haven't done anything different."

"You have changed your hair color?" he guessed, furrowing his brow.

"No," she shook her head. "Nothing."

"You do look different," Dezi said, "but it isn't your hair." She looked at her closely. "Are you wearing make up?"

Phoebe got down on the floor to see to Toaster and giggled. "No, I'm not wearing make up." She turned to Toaster. "How is my patient doing today?"

"Good," he struggled to sit up, wincing. "I'm a little sore, but good."

"That's what we want to hear," she began removing his bandages to check his wounds.

"Dezi and I have been reading a book," Toaster said, "and it says in it that phoenix tears will heal anything."

"Are you reading Harry Potter," she asked dubiously.

"You've read it?" Dezi asked, surprised.

"No," she said, "but I was forced to watch the movies."

"It said in it that phoenix tears heal anything," Dezi said in a rush. "I told Toaster that you were like a phoenix that night you saved him, that you brought him up out of the ashes of death."

Hadn't she already described what a phoenix was Dezi?

"But then you told me that phoenixes didn't raise other people from the ashes."

Oh, the woman had been listening.

"But I know you must have cried on his cuts," Dezi continued.

She didn't remember crying at all that night, but then, she'd cried so much, she could have very well cried the entire time she was stitching Toaster up. 

"You're the Healing Phoenix," Toaster said reverently, "not just the Medicienne."

"That is quite a mouthful," she said with a smile. "The Healing Phoenix. It is much easier to just say the Medicienne."

"You are The Phoenix," Dezi said.

Chategris chuckled scoffing , "You have a new name, eh, ma chere?"

An image of the fiery bird that had swept her up in its flames only a few days before came to her mind. She had resisted Chategris' title of La Medicienne for years, but still it had become hers. This, she could claim on her own.

"Yes," she said to him. "It appears that I do."


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT2012, those whose stories will never be told. I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like. Therefore, there are no Turtles or Turtle friends in this story (yet).

~~

Aries finished his car when they were 17. It was a four door Toyota with a sun roof, which the kids had painted black. Red and yellow flames donned the sides of the car, while on the hood was a giant fiery bird. "It's your car too, Mama," they said. "So it has to have a phoenix on it."

She had laughed and shook her head, never expecting that she would drive it.

However, it was then up to the Phoenix to teach them to drive. She hadn't driven in 17 years, and had to give herself a refresher course before she could teach them. Her stops were jerky, and her speed wasn't even, and she thanked goodness it wasn't a stick shift. It might take her weeks to figure out how to drive one of those again.

Of the three of them, Medusa took to driving the best, despite not having any feet. She folded her tail to make two pressure points for the pedals, and was so good at controlling her body that she easily found a rhythm in operating the car.

Now with the car operational, and working on a battery bank, the kids were gone whenever they could be, driving around the city. The Phoenix was sure they were getting into some sort of trouble, but she didn't know what and she didn't mind. They were not with the Grey Cats anywhere near as much anymore, only once in a while to train with Razz. That set her mind greatly at ease about their activities. They always came back safe and sound at midnight, which was their curfew.

Twice a week, she went around the city, starting out long before dark, to her 'clinics'. She would wait until the unbidden thought told her to stop, and every time she did, a mutant came to her for help. She now carried two messenger bags with her, and the dried herbs to make things for her patients to take with them. She had several regular spots where people would be waiting for her, sometimes more than one. Most asked how they could repay her, and she always said, "I don't want for anything, I have everything that I need." And she meant it.

On this particular night, the unbidden thought came to her in meditation. _Go to the border._

The border of what?

_Cat._

Cat? Go to the cat border? She took in a sharp breath when realization dawned on her. Go to the border of The Grey Cat's territory.

_Take your things._

She grabbed her two messenger bags, and put a notebook and pen in one of them, just in case this wasn't a medical outing, but a more poetical one. She then leaped her way to the border of the Grey Cat's territory, making sure to avoid the cargo bay. When she reached the border, she dropped to the ground and began to walk, listening for the unbidden thought to tell her to _Wait here._

When it did, she was in a neighborhood, and the unbidden thought lead her into an alleyway. She sat on a garbage can and waited.

Three rather suspicious young humans came down the alley, eying her greedily. When they got farther down, and saw her clearly, they all stopped dead in their tracks.

"You're one of those freaks," one of them said fiercely.

"You mean The Grey Cats?" she asked, working to keep her breathing steady and her shoulders down.

"The Grey Cats," another sneered.

"No," she said calmly. "I am not. I sometimes help them though." She paused, but before any of them said or did anything, she added, "Do one of you need help?"

The question seemed to take them off guard. They looked at each other nervously, and then back at her. "Man," one of them said quietly.

"Didn't you hear her?" asked the second man. "She helps those freaks!"

"She asked if we needed help."

One of them turned to her, and took a step toward her. Fear gripped her, but she squished it down. The unbidden thought had never steered her wrong. It would not now. "We don't need help," he said, "but we know somebody who does."

"She ain't going near--" the second one said.

"You want your mama to die?" the third one chimed in. "Cause last time I checked, the doctors weren't doing no good."

The Phoenix stood up, "If you take me to your mother, I will try to help her."

The second young man seemed to debate with himself in his head. "You do anything to hurt her, I will hunt you down and kill you," he said.

The Phoenix nodded. "Fair enough."

They lead her through the streets, where she smiled and nodded at people as she passed them. A few of them smiled and nodded back at her, but most of them looked at her like she was crazy, and she thought, perhaps she was. They arrived at an apartment complex, and the men buzzed the door open.

The stairs smelled awful, sour and stifling. They walked up to the second floor, and in the apartment they entered, on a couch, was a small, frail old woman. 

"Hey, Mama," the second man said the word Mama just as her children did. "I got this lady to come and help you."

The woman opened her eyes, they were cloudy with cataracts and droopy with exhaustion. "There ain't nobody to help me, boy," she said.

The Phoenix walked up to her and got down on her knees, so she was on the same level as the old woman. "I can try," she said. "Will you let me?"

The old woman looked at her for a long time, and the Phoenix thought for a moment that she had gotten lost in thought, or in dementia, but then the old woman said, "Alrigh'..."

"What's the matter?" the Phoenix asked.

The old woman laughed bitterly, "You don't already know what's wrong?"

"I can't read minds," the Phoenix said gently. 

"I got AIDS, child," she said. "You can't help me."

She thought for a moment, going through her head with what she had read. She hadn't dealt with HIV before, and her knowledge of it was purely theoretical. "Are you taking medications for it?" she asked.

"Can't afford no medications," one of the men said behind her, as if she was crazy for asking such a question.

She nodded, and looked the old woman over, feeling the familiar tingling in her hands begin to get stronger and stronger. She felt as if she was being drawn over to the woman's abdomen, so she placed her hands there, and let the tingling flow out of her and into the woman. She gave some herbs to her son, told him which other ones to get and how to use them, writing it on a torn out page of the notebook she'd brought. Then, she went back home.

So her days entered a smooth rhythm, as they had in her children's youth. They slept, ate, shopped, trained, worked, laughed, and loved with each other. She watched them grow from teenagers into young adults with a softness and gratefulness she could not have imagined at any other time in her life. 

***

"Mama, you gotta come see this!" Arcos called to the Phoenix from the kitchen. She came into the living 'room' to the TV.

The news was on, the anchorman Carlos Chiang O'Brian Gambe was ending his report. "Are there ninjas in New York City?" he said before signing off.

"Ninja's in New York City," she shook her head. "They're desperate for news if they're reporting that."

"Wouldn't that be cool if there were ninjas in New York City?" Medusa asked turning the TV off. 

"Why would ninjas be in New York City?" Aries asked. 

"It's just some kid dressed in a costume, obviously overexcited about his throwing star replicas," Phoenix said. 

"Can we dress up as ninjas and get throwing stars?" Aries asked excitedly. "That would be so cool!"

"No, you can't dress up as ninjas and get throwing stars," Phoenix put her hands on her hips. "Well," she reconsidered, "you can dress up as ninjas, not you can't get throwing stars."

Arcos laughed, "We don't need throwing stars, Wooly-head," he said.

"We already have weapons," Medusa chimed in, "and they're cooler than throwing stars."

"I got two weapons," Aries patted his large, swirled horns.

"That's because your head is so hard," Medusa said.

"Better than yours, Snake-Breath."

"Stop," Phoenix said. "Are you going out tonight?"

"Of course, Mama," Arcos said. "We have to fight crime and protect the city from evil!"

Phoenix rolled her eyes. "You know how I feel about your vigilantism."

"You've been a vigilante much longer than we have, Mama," Medusa reminded her. "You just heal the good people. We hurt the bad people."

She gave her daughter a sidelong look.

"It isn't our fault we found those people robbing that store when we were driving around," Aries said.

"I just don't want you to draw too much attention to yourselves," she said quietly. "You've been doing this for a while now, and I just don't want it to get out of hand."

"Eight months isn't a while," Arcos said. "In 18 months, then you can say we've been doing it a while."

She waved her hand at him, and laughed. "Don't worry, in 18 months, I am sure I will say you've been doing it much too long."

***

Her three nineteen year old children came back that night in prime spirits. It was only a few hours before dawn, and Phoenix had made breakfast to keep her hands busy. "Meet any ninjas out there?" she asked.

"No," Arcos said, "but we saw these guys robbing a jewelry store, and we stopped them."

"They called Arcos a dog," Aries laughed.

She sat down and smiled at the three of them. "Tell me about it."

The three of them sat down and settled into their seats..

"There were these five guys, over on Bentent St., and they had broken the glass in front of this little pawn shop-like place," Arcos started.

"We heard the alarm going off in the car," Medusa interjected, "so we went to check it out, that's how we found them."

"We thought for a minute that it didn't matter, because it has bars in front of the windows," Aries added.

"But then, we saw they had these giant lock cutters!" Arcos did a shoulder press in an impression of closing cutters. "They were cutting out sections of the bars, and so we drove up--"

"--Aries made the tires squeal!" Medusa said.

"--and jumped out of the car!"

"Medusa jumped out of the sunroof!" Aries had obviously been impressed with the move.

"They were shocked when they saw us," Arcos laughed, "they just stared."

"You could see the white of their eyes, Mama," Medusa said.

"Aries went to ram one of them with his head, but the guy moved out of the way and he got the bars, and got stuck!" 

"Hey," Aries defended himself, "the bars bent and caught my horn."

"Medusa was super-fast, she wrapped this dude up and squeezed the breath right out of him. He passed out," Arcos said. "I grabbed this other guy and flung him against the street."

"That's when this other dude called him a dog," Aries laughed.

"That's wasn't cool," Arcos muttered.

"I got my horns out of the bars, and grabbed this guy by the throat. You should have seen, Mama, his eyes were bulging out of his head. I stuffed him in-between the bars and the window. He didn't fit very well."

"How many 'dudes' were there again?" Phoenix asked.

"Five," they said in unison.

"The other two guys ran away, and then we heard police sirens."

"No--" Phoenix's eyes went wide.

"They didn't see us, Mama," Medusa assured her. "Arcos picked the guy up from the street, and Aries bent the bars to keep the guy from moving."

"Then we jumped back in the car and Aries drove us away," Arcos punched the air. "It was so awesome."

"We are so awesome," Aries said.

"You're all awesome," Phoenix said, less than enthusiastically. "I wish you wouldn't be so brutally awesome."

"Would you have wanted us to just let them steal the stuff in that shop?" Medusa asked. 

Phoenix sighed. "No," she admitted. "I wouldn't."

"We're like superheroes!" Medusa giggled.

"We don't need no stinkin' ninja costumes!" Aries said.

The three of them laughed, and Phoenix had to smile with them.

***

Arcos roared and swung at Aries with the wooden ax he used for training. Aries held out his wooden sledgehammer to block the blow. Aries shoved the ax upwards, forcing Arcos a few steps back. While Arcos was trying to regain his balance with his arms still raised, Aries rammed him in the chest with his horns, sending the bear sprawling.

"I win!" Aries put his hands in the air, pumping the wooden sledgehammer. 

Arcos stood up, rubbing his chest. "You got lucky."

Medusa came up to the cleared area on the gym floor and gave Aries a reptilian smile, "You won't get lucky with me."

They walked around in a circle, each one waiting for the other to make a move. Inevitably, it was Medusa who darted at Aries first, striking out with blinding speed. Aries swung the ax, blocking Medusa's strike, but not hitting her. As she retracted, she snapped out her whip, one made of a cotton with a weighted velvet popper for practice. The whip wrapped around Aries arm, and a pull sent the ax skittering across the floor. Now that he was unarmed, Medusa darted at him again. He managed to strafe out of the way, and Medusa over shot him. 

Again, they walked around in a circle, like wrestlers waiting for one to show a sign of weakness. Aries kept flitting his eyes to his ax, and as he did, Medusa cracked her snakewhip Aries made a dash for his weapon, and in a moment, Medusa had him off the floor wrapped in a coil, smiling down at him. 

"I win," she said quietly.

She released her brother, and put her small hands on what would have been her hips had it not all be snake body, "Razz says you can't always rely on your strength, that you've got to work on your speed, too."

"You're super fast, you don't count."

"Razz can catch me," Medusa said, "and so Crevan. I'm not that fast."

"You're that slow," Arcos patted Aries on the shoulder. "Water break," he said. "Then Catch the Monkey." 

The Phoenix liked watching her children spar. She was always amazed at the control they had over their bodies, bodies a strange and different mix of human and animal. She would sit and watch them, having a pitcher of cucumber with mint water and glasses to rehydrate them. After all of them drinking, they all took their places on the gym floor.

Phoenix and the children had hung up several other bars, ropes, and rings from the ceiling in to make a more challenging training course, as they called it. Phoenix stood in the middle, and each of her children stood in a different corner of the room, forming a triangle around her. She stood with her hands at her sides, her eyes going from each one of them, trying to see the others in her peripheral vision. With a signal that she couldn't identify, all three of them came at her at the same time. She jumped up, grabbed a ring, and swing herself up just before Medusa landed in the spot she'd been standing. 

Then, the chasing started. Their game had gotten much more complicated since their younger years. The children used their weapons in addition to their bodies in an attempt to catch her. She'd been hit with a thrown ax or hammer on more than one occasion, and it was because of being caught in Medusa's snake whip that her daughter now had a more gentle practice one.

The children had a hard time catching her, despite their training. It was the only way she felt that she could help them with their training, especially now that they saw Razz less and less. She could work on them with their gymnastics, but she couldn't help them with strategy or self defense. She could, however, give them practice at trying to catch a moving target who was trying her hardest to get away from them.

Eventually, Medusa and Aries cornered her, and as she jumped, Aries' hammer hit her shoulder, changing her trajectory. She fell into Arcos' waiting arms, and laughed.

He put her down and she said, "We have to leave to go to clinic."

"I hope we meet some bad guys on the way to clinic," Medusa put her whip on her back. "I like being a vigilante."

They rarely took the car when they did clinic, unless Phoenix got the distinct impression that she needed to go somewhere farther away. They traveled the "old fashioned way", by jumping rooftops and sneaking in alleyways. 

She sat on a crate in an alleyway, the kids talking with her, until a human stumbled out of the darkness.  
Phoenix smiled at him, "Hello, King Henry."

"Hello, Lady Phoenix," he said in a gruff voice. He nodded his head to each of the mutants behind her, "Hello, Animal Spirits."

The three of them nodded their heads toward King Henry.

"Have you been using the syrup I gave you?" Phoenix asked.. "Has it helped?"

"A little," he said. "I'd really like that stuff you have me the first time, it worked better."

She placed a hand on his chest and another on his back, "I think it is better for you to have the syrup," she told him. On his first visit to her, she had given him a tincture made with alcohol. He admitted that he had finished it off in half an hour, and from then on, she gave him a tincture made of honey. She sent the tingling into his lungs, seeing in her minds eye the fiery light going from her hands into his body and engulfing his lungs.

He breathed in deeply, and let the breath out slow. "Thank you," his voice was a little less gruff.

She took a bottle of syrup out of her messenger pack, and handed it to him. "One teaspoon twice a day, King Henry," she told him. "If you do it the way you're supposed to, you might actually get better."

"I get better whenever I see you, Lady Phoenix," he said. "Your animal spirits give you a lot of power."

She chuckled. "Indeed they do."

Toward the end of her wait, an earwig mutant came out of the shadows, its head a round brown bulb, with bulbous faceted eyes, and a pincer mouth. Its body was long, with small, wiggly spikes where the legs of the earwig would have been.

"Hello," she said gently, "are you hurt?"

"Are you The Phoenix?" it asked.

"I am," she replied. "What is your name?"

"Tyson," he came forward slowly.

"Are you hurt?" she asked again.

"My head," he turned his head slightly to show a gash in it, caked blue-green with hemolymph.

Phoenix clucked her tongue. "Did you meet with some thugs?" 

"Business men."

Phoenix stopped in her ministrations. "Business men?"

Before Tyson could answer, around the corner came three men. Phoenix froze, her vision seemed to narrow in on them, walking like zombies, looking identical to each other, with black hair, black eyes, and black suits. They said nothing, but came forward steadily. The earwig let out a strange sound, and ran past her and the kids in the alley. All three of her children leaped forward, Arcos letting out a warning growl. 

"No!" her voice was frantic. "Run!! Run!!" She grabbed at Aries, the one closest to her, and pulled him back toward her. "Run!" 

The three of them turned and looked at her, their eyes wide with surprise. The look of horror her face reflected back to her in their pupils in the dim light. After a split second of them looking their mother in the eyes, they obeyed. Medusa scooped Phoenix up as they turned and fled, catapulting along the rooftops. Phoenix was in a daze, her mind running in circles, she was on the train in NYC, in her pretty blue dress, and then she was enveloped in her daughter's coils, speeding through the city. They didn't stop until they were home.

"Mama, what's the matter?" Aries held her by the shoulders as she sank into one of the dining room chairs. 

"Why did we need to run?" Medusa asked.

"Who were those men?" Arcos bent down to be closer to his mother's eye level.

The Phoenix's mind kept waving in and out of here, and the life of someone else, long ago, that was long gone. "Those men," she said, and she realized she was shaking, and she was cold. "Those men...they were the same men who took me..."

"They're the men who took us to the lab place?" Arcos asked gently.

She nodded. "Yes." 

Aries put a blanket around her, and muttered, "She's going into shock."

Medusa coiled around her again, in tight spirals, lifting her off the chair. "It's alright Mama," she said. "They're gone."

She shook her head, wanting to wipe her mind clean of any memory of the men in business suits. "No," she said plaintively. "They were never gone."


	14. Chapter 14

A/N:  It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT 2012, those whose stories will never be told.  I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like.  Therefore, there are no Turtles or Turtle friends in this story (yet).

 

~~

 

 

"I'm Carlos Chang O'Brian Gambe, and Jack J. Kurtzman is on ground zero of the latest scientist kidnapping.   Over to you, Jack."

 

"Thanks Carlos," the white haired journalist said into his microphone.  He was in front of  the Psychology Labs building, the steps behind him making the door to the building look far away.  "I'm here at the workplace of Kirby O'Neil, a psychologist with Labs.  This is the seventh case of a scientist kidnapping in the past three months...."

 

The four of them sat on the couch, listening to the evening news.  Phoenix knew who had kidnapped the scientists before the unbidden thought told her, _You know who took them._

 

"It was those men in the suits," she said out loud.

 

"What?" Aries asked, taking his eyes away from the TV.

 

"The scientists.  They were taken by those men in those suits."  She paused for moment, and in a far away voice said, "Like I was."

 

"What do those men what with a bunch of scientists?" Medusa asked. 

 

"I don't know," Phoenix answered.  "What did they want with me?  Maybe the aliens are paying them for people..."

 

"To experiment on?" Arcos suggested.  "To turn them into mutants like us?"

 

"I don't know,"  Phoenix sighed.  "It doesn't matter."

 

"Shouldn't you tell the police?  Like that you have a tip off or something?" Medusa suggested.

 

"If I told the police, they would put me away as being deranged."  She put on a large, vapid smile and said joyfully, "Excuse me Officer, but these identical twin men in black business suits are the ones who are kidnapping the scientists.  I think they might be selling them to aliens."

 

"That can't sound any worse than, 'I know this because I'm the mother of three half animal-half human hybrids,'" Aries teased.

 

Phoenix laughed.  "No, it wouldn't, would it?  They say the truth is stranger than fiction."

 

"Whoever said that was right," Medusa turned the TV off, "we could write one hell of a book if we novelized our lives."

 

"Language..." Phoenix warned.

 

"We have to do something, Mama," Medusa said, "people are being kidnapped."

 

"Kidnapped and who knows what else," Arcos added.

 

"We can't help them," Phoenix said gently.  "How can we help them?"

 

"We can find them, and rescue them if they're still alive," Aries said.

 

"And if they're not?" Phoenix asked.

 

"We can stop others from being kidnapped if they're not."

 

She was silent for a long time, the children looking at her.  The only sound was the traffic in the far distance, and the love songs of insects in the evening.  "It's too dangerous," she shook her head.

 

"What do you mean it's too dangerous?" Aries stood up, glaring at her.

 

"We can deal with it, Mama, we're not babies," Medusa chimed in.

 

She waited for Arcos' argument, but he remained thoughtfully silent, regarding her closely.

 

"We've told you how we've beaten other bad guys," Aries said.  "We can totally do this."

 

"These aren't the same as other bad guys, Aries," her voice was taut, Phoenix was beginning to loose her temper.  "They're..." she shook her head, thinking of term to describe it.  "They were stronger than anything I have ever come across in my life."

 

"Stronger than us?" Medusa had a doubtful smile on her face.

 

"Yes," Phoenix turned to her, her wavy hair shaking slightly.  "Much stronger."

 

"We can't let some business men sell scientists to aliens, Mama!" Aries voice rose.

 

Arcos stood up, more massive than his brother, and put his paw on his shoulder.  "Maybe can find out where they're taking them, and then contact the police," he said calmly, looking at his mother.

 

She looked up into his chocolate brown eyes, accentuated by the blond tipped brown fur that made up his eyebrows, and shook her head.  "No," she repeated.  "It's too dangerous."  She stood up, and walked to the far end of the floor toward the gym, "And you aren't going out tonight either."

 

She heard a chorus of "Awwwww"s behind her, but she tried to ignore them as she sank down on the yoga floor cross legged, her back to the rest of the warehouse floor, and began to listen to her own breathing.

 

At times like these, when she didn't want to think of anything, the movement was too much for her to bear, she had to rely on meditation to get the thoughts to stop.  The thoughts lead to fear, and if she felt the fear too much, she was afraid of the despair returning.

 

She had not been so afraid as she had that night with the business men in the alley since Ailurosa had been killed.  The thought of her eldest daughter sent a wave of bittersweet nostalgia through her, and she tried to push it away, and listen to her breathing. 

 

Ailurosa, the most human-looking of her children, would have greatly enjoyed the outings of her siblings, and playing superhero.  Would she, though?  Would she have begun to start a life with Crevan already?  Ailurosa was fiery and passionate--

 

 _Like her mother,_ said the unbidden thought.

 

  1.   She didn't want a contemplation meditation, she wanted one that erased thought.  She concentrated on her breath again, and began counting down from 100 to keep her mind busy.



 

The feel of Ailurosa's fur on her cheek came to her, and her arms ached slightly to hold onto her deceivingly delicate frame.

 

_Like her mother._

 

Her own voice came to her through the phantom feel of soft cat fur,  'We are all good and bad people.  It is the culmination of our decisions that matter.  Is the choice one is about to make a good one or bad one?'

 

She let the thought pass over her mind like a cloud in the sky and began counting down from 100 again.

 

Then her voice came to her again, 'It isn't right not to help someone when you can, especially when they ask.'

 

She opened her eyes, and looked at the blank wall in front of her.  She should have made the children train instead.

 

Standing up, she turned back toward the living room.  The kids were on the couch, playing Space Invaders on the Atari they'd found almost 15 years ago.  It had become a valued companion in the 18 months between the analogue switch and their finding a digital converter.

 

Walking slowly back over to them, she came to stand behind the couch, and watched them for a while.  "You're right," she said finally.  "We have to do something."

 

***

 

Arcos spread the map of their section of NYC on the table, and put a star on their location.  "We're here," he said.

 

"That means this is the edge of the haunted warehouses," Medusa outlined a small rectangle around it with her finger.

 

"Right."  Arcos took a pencil and outlined where Medusa had traced.  "I figure, we can start looking at businesses that would be in the probable area we came from.  It's a place to start, we know that at one time, at least, aliens were there."

 

All three mutants turned to the Phoenix.   She looked from one to the other, to the other.  "What?" she asked.

 

"Where was the business building that we came from?" Arcos asked.

 

Phoenix furrowed her brow in annoyance.  "I have no idea!"

 

"What do you mean you have no idea?" Aries asked.  "We came from there!"

 

"Excuse me," Phoenix put her hands on her hips, "for not remembering what business it was that I ran out of carrying five baby mutants and running for our lives!"

 

"Maybe we can backtrack and figure out where it might be," Medusa suggested.

 

They all looked at the map, and looked at it some more.

 

"Can you think of anything that might give us a hint as to where the building might be?" Arcos asked.

 

She looked at the map in confusion.  "No..." she shook her head.  "Well," she looked up, "we ran."

 

"Yeah?" Aries asked slowly.

 

"We ran from the building, for about three days," she explained.

 

"So the building has to be a three day run from here!" Medusa exclaimed.  "If a person can walk 4 miles an hour, and they walk for 10 hours..." Medusa's expression fell, "...that's 120 miles!"

 

"No," Phoenix smiled.  "We didn't run for 10 hours a day."

 

"How fast come someone run, or walk, while holding five babies?" Arcos asked.

 

"Exactly," Phoenix pointed at him.   "So, let's say...2 miles an hour, for 6 hours.  That gives us a 36 mile radius."

 

"That's huge!" Medusa said.

 

 _Ask_ , said the unbidden thought.

 

They all looked at the map again. 

 

 _Ask_ , said the thought again.

 

Ask what? Phoenix thought, nettled.

 

"We could just start in and work our way out?" Arcos suggested.

 

"But where do we start?" Medusa was almost plaintive.  "36 miles is a such a huge circle!"

 

 _Ask_ , the thought whispered.

 

Phoenix smiled, the light bulb coming on.  "We'll ask the Grey Cats!"

 

***

 

The Phoenix's arrival at the cargo bay for a social visit caused quite a stir among the residents.  It was still very rare that she came when not on medical business, especially since she didn't spy on the kids any longer.

 

"Ma Phenix!" Chategris came up to her, a genuine smile on his face.  He pronounced her name in French, "Feh-neee", drawing out the last of the word.  "Comment va tu?" <How are you?>

 

"I am fine, thank you," she said.  He and his group were the closest thing she had to extended family, and she was honestly happy to seem them most of the time.  She never hugged him when she saw him, though occasionally she had the inclination to.  She would take one of his paws in her hands and give him a gentle squeeze, and he would reply by covering her small hands with his other paw.  Sometimes he would let go easily, and other times she had to pull gently to get him to release her.  "I something to ask of you," she said.

 

Chategris' eyebrow whiskers shot straight up.  "La Phenix has something to ask of me?" he drawled.

 

Her good mood evaporated.  "Yes," she replied tartly. 

 

The pretty bunny that sometimes hung on Chategris' arm came through the crowd holding a steaming mug.  She held it out to the Phoenix without saying anything.

 

The Phoenix looked confused.

 

Chategris waved his arm, indicating she take the drink.  "It is for you," he said.  "Hot tea, with honey and cream."

 

She took it gingerly, still looking confused.

 

"We are always delighted with La Phenix when she comes to visit us," Chategris said.  "We want to make her feel welcome."

 

She took a sip, it tasted divine, as always.  "Do you know of any businesses around here?" she asked.

 

It was his turn to look confused, "Comment?" <What?>

 

"We're looking for a business, with men in business suits," she said.

 

"Ma cherie," Chategris said at a loss, "there are businesses with business men all over the city."

 

Phoenix took a deep breath.  "We're looking for a business, it's a high rise."  Chategris began to look amused. "With a bunch of other highrise business.  The people who work in the building wear business suits, and..." the next part sounded strange in her head, she was sure it would sound crazy out loud, "there are a set of, at least, identical triplets working there."

 

"That is not much information to go on," Chategris' derisive smile was back.  "And I am not sure how a group of freaks like us would find out who works in a building without staking out every building that might be it."

 

She let out a defeated sigh. 

 

"I will keep my eyes open for identical triplets in business suits, mon plus cherie," <My most cherished one> he said, "but I can do no more than that, I am afraid."

 

Won't do more than that, Phoenix retorted in her mind.  But she said, "Merci, Chategris.  I appreciate it."

 

***

 

"So it looks like we're staking out every building it might be," Aries said.  "We better get started."

 

They sat on the front steps of their warehouse, the smell of the medicinal garden wafting through the air.  "Let's try to eliminate some more things first," Phoenix "suggested.  "Or we'll never find it."

 

"It probably isn't west," Arcos said. "Well within that radius is the water."

 

Phoenix nodded.

 

"What way did you come to the warehouse?  May be that can give us a direction," Medusa suggested.

 

Phoenix looked around dishearteningly.  "I don't remember, Curly Que."  After a moment of thought she said, "But it couldn't have been east, either, because I didn't come through Chategris' territory."

 

"How do you know?" Arcos asked.

 

"Surely someone would have noticed a woman with five mutant babies running around the alleyways," she replied.

 

"Good point," Arcos conceded.

 

"Why don't we just start at the middle of the radius," Aries advised, "and work our way around?"

 

"Looks like that is what we're going to do," Phoenix said.  "Let's get the car."  She glared at the three of them. "I'm driving."

 

***

 

"Mama, go faster," Medusa whined.

 

"No," she replied.  "I'm already going ten miles over the speed limit."

 

"Oh, what adventure," she drawled.

 

"How fast do you kids go in this thing?" she asked harshly.

 

"Why do I have to sit in the backseat," Aries complained.  Phoenix thought it might have been to change the subject.

 

"Because you're shorter than me," Arcos said.  "And Mama's driving."

 

They drove for hours, weaving through streets, looking at the buildings.  None of them looked familiar.

They were driving through a little shop district on their way home in the wee hours of the morning just before dawn, when they saw shadows moving into the darkness of an overhang. 

"Pull over, Mama," Arcos said.

 

Aries let out a malicious laugh, and popped his head up from the sunroof, while Medusa opened the back door and slid out of the car.  Arcos was right behind her.

 

The Phoenix had no idea what to do, so she got out of the car and followed her three kids into the shadows.  Three young Asian men were standing over an old man and woman, knives out and pointing at him.

 

"That's not a good idea," said Aries.

 

The three men flipped around, their eyes going wide.  "More of 'em?" asked one, as he ran toward Aries with the knife.  The other two men dashed toward Medusa and Arcos, and the Phoenix ran to the old couple.  "Are you hurt?" she asked, looking surreptitiously at the fight going on behind her.

 

"We are not hurt," said the old lady, her eyes also on the fight.

 

The largest of the men was thrown against the wall by Arcos, next to her and the old couple.  He shook his head groggily, and caught sight of them.  Arcos was headed over to help Aries with a skinny, wily one.  With his knife still out, the man lunged at her.

 

She let out a quick scream and kicked her leg out, hitting the man's arm.  His knife flew out of his hand, but it didn't stop his forward momentum.   She had one leg still out from her kick, and the other bent in front of her.  When the man fell on her at a tilt, he landed on her outstretched side, so that when she kicked her bent leg, it hit the air.

 

She pushed him at his shoulders and twisted before he had gotten his balance back, but it wasn't enough force to free her outstretched leg.  He looked up at her, the arm she'd kicked tucked at his side.  He reached out with this other hand and grabbed her shirt.

 

She let out another scream as he struggled to stand up while she flailed in his hand by the collar.  Suddenly, she was free, and Arcos stood before her, the man was in the air being flung off of her.

 

All three of the men were stumbling on the street.  Arcos let a growl, and the three of them went running.

 

Aries chuckled.

 

Arcos turned to his mother, "Are you alright?"

 

"I'm fine," she said, turning to the old couple. "Are you alright?"

 

Their eyes were wide as they looked from the Phoenix, to Arcos, to Aries, to Medusa, and back again.  The old man nodded his head vigorously, and the old woman said, "Who are you?"

 

"We're The Children of the Phoenix," Arcos said with a gruff voice, before heading toward to car. 

 

Aries had already gotten in the driver's seat, and Medusa was in the car.  Phoenix smiled at the old couple and said, "I'm glad you're not hurt," and got into the back of the car next to Medusa.  Aries sped off at a speed much more than 10 miles over the speed limit.

 

"Children of the Phoenix?" Medusa thumped Arcos' head from behind him. "Really?"

 

"Dude," Aries laughed, "That's bad."

 

"It was pretty bad, Teddy Bear," Phoenix stroked his ear sitting catty corner  from him.  "But I appreciate the sentiment."

 

"Do any of you have anything better?" he growled.

 

All three of them laughed, giddy from the adrenaline and the absurdity of the name.  "No," they all finally said.

 

"Then I guess were The Children of the Phoenix," Arcos said smugly.

 

"Hey, at least we match the car!" Medusa said.

 

"Speaking of the car," Phoenix's voice turned serious.  "If we are going to be playing superheroes, we need to paint the flames off this car."

 

"What?" Arcos turned in his seat to face her.  "It took me two weeks to paint this car."

 

"We can't be driving around in a car with flames painted on it!" she exclaimed.

 

"...and a phoenix on the front," Medusa muttered.

 

"And a phoenix on the front!" Phoenix added.

 

"But the car is beautiful!

 

"Then we need a new car."

 

It was Aries turn to twist in his seat, "It took me years to build this car!"

 

"Eyes on the road!!" Medusa and Phoenix yelled at the same time as the car began to serve.

 

Aries righted the car, and said, "It took me years to build this car.  It's my baby."

 

"Then we need a car that isn't your baby," Phoenix said.  "We need an ordinary, hard to identify, plain black car."

 

"Awww," Aries slumped in the seat.  "I like this car."

 

"You can keep this car," Phoenix assured him.  "We just can't play superheroes in it."

 

"We aren't playing superheroes, Mama," corrected Medusa.  "We are superheroes."

 

Arcos twisted in the seat again to face her.  "What's all this about 'we'?"

 

"We," said Phoenix, "as in you and I."

 

"You can't come with us," Aries said, keeping his eyes on the road. 

 

"Yes I can," she said stubbornly.

 

"What are you going to do in a fight?" Aries persisted.  "Twice now we've had to save you."

 

"No you---"

 

"Yes we have," Aries interrupted her.  "What would have happened to you tonight if Arcos hadn't seen you?"

 

"I was handling it very nicely, I think," she said proudly.

 

"Yeah, a dude twice your size was on top of you about to pound you into the pavement, and you were handling it very nicely."

 

"I knocked his knife out of his hand!"

 

"He's right, Mama," Arcos said.  "You have to learn to defend yourself."

 

"I can stay in the car, be the get away driver."

 

Arcos have her a dubious look.  "Tell you what," Arcos said.  "We'll build an ordinary, black car and you will learn to defend yourself."

 

She sighed.

 

***

 

The car was built in a week.  They dropped everything, including Phoenix's clinics, to get what they needed for the car, and during the day, they built it.  She was tired of the phrase, "Medusa, you have little hands, come over here and hold this," by the end of the week.  She did what she was told, building a car was much more complicated than figuring out how to turn on the plumbing in an already plumbed building. 

 

It was, indeed, an ordinary car.  Arcos painted it flat black, so that the light reflected on it was lessened,  and Medusa put a false license plate on it that they'd found.

 

"We did our part," Aries told her when they were done.  "You have to do yours."

 

"We don't know how well it drives yet," she hedged. 

 

So the kids convinced her to take the car to her next clinic outing, and she reluctantly agreed.  

 

"We can get a lot more shopping done this way," Medusa had said. 

 

"And we can stop by a school and look for notebooks," Arcos almost sang.

 

"Lots and lots of notebooks..." Aries voice was airy.

 

Phoenix had a sneaking suspicion they had orchestrated this encounter.  She was filled with a mixture of pride and apprehension when the car worked perfectly.  She had to admit, however, that it was nice to not have to walk half the night. 

 

She dealt with the patients that showed up, all of them mutants, and then they headed to their dumpster runs.  They struck out on the high school's dumpster, only find one notebook and a few pens and pencils.  Underneath a bag of garbage was an old fashioned, broken slingshot.  She picked it up, and held it up in the dim light from the distant street lamps.

 

"Aries," she showed it to him.  "Can you make me a fancy version of this?"

 

The ram looked at it and a huge smile broke out on his face.


	15. Chapter 15

A/N:  It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT 2012, those whose stories will never be told.  I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like.  Therefore, there are no Turtles or Turtle friends in this story (yet).

 

~~

 

 

"You hold it like this,"  Aries knelt behind his mother, pulling back the sling, his large, fuzzy hand over hers.  He let the sling go, and she followed suit, and the acorn flew in the air and hit the wall.  "You can hold it at your shoulder," Aries demonstrated.  "Or at your hip."  He unhooked the elastic, "And you can use it like an old fashioned slingshot if the handle breaks."

 

"It's beautiful!" Phoenix beamed.  The sling shot was a work of art in and of itself.  Aries had carved it so the handle fit her grip perfectly, and had carved the head of a phoenix on the end, and the fork were beautifully carved wings.  Arcos had stained it so the carving stood out.  Phoenix almost felt it should hang on the wall rather than be used as a weapon.

 

"If push comes to shove," he continued, "you can beat someone with the rubber.  It will sting."

 

They all laughed.

 

She practiced when the children were with The Grey Cats, which was much more frequent now that they had a real reason to train, other than for the Phoenix's peace of mind.  For weeks, she practiced with the slingshot for hours a day at both shoulders until she had a 95% bulls eye rate.  Then she switched to her hips,  and her rate down to 2%.  She practiced there for hours a day until she had a

95% hit rate at that position.  When she tried to practice with the sling not attached to the fork, she went missed the target every single time for two hours.  With some rather rude words to the piece of rubber, she went back to shooting at her shoulders and hips.  She occasionally admired her triceps.  Not bad for an old woman, she thought to herself with a smile. 

 

The children would show off for her, and she would now show off for them.  "You're getting really good, Mama," Medusa told her.

 

"Now you need to learn to roll and shoot," Aries said.

 

"Roll and shoot?"  Phoenix said.  "I'm just getting good at shooting standing still."

 

So hours and hours of roll and shoot, roll and shoot happened until her 5% hit rate went up to a 90%.

 

Between shopping, training, and staking out high rise business buildings, there wasn't much time for anything else.  However, sometime in between all of this, Aries presented Phoenix with a gift.  It was a large contraption that resembled a large crossbow on a stand.

 

"It's beautiful, Aries," she said.  "What is it?"

 

Aries laughed.  "It's a plate launcher."

 

"A plate launcher?" she looked confused.

 

"Yeah, it's like a skeet shooter."

 

"Oh," she drawled out.

 

"We got you plates for it too!"  Medusa laughed, as Arcos put a box next to the launcher.  Medusa put a plate in the contraption, and it catapulted into the air, crashing into the wall.  "Now you can shoot them out of the sky."

 

Having a moving target put a new speed and pressure on her fingers, so that she blistered.  Aries made her pair of fingerless glove, that left her pinkies free.

 

She also had a lot of sweeping to do.

 

***

 

A call to come to the cargo bay gave a welcome break in slingshot practice and building watching, even if it was to sew someone up.   They were getting very disheartened in their search.

 

"We're never going to find it," Medusa complained on their last outing.

 

"We can't give up," Aries had said, "not when we know what is going on."

 

"We don't know what's going on," Arcos had said.  "We're just guessing."

 

"It's a pretty good guess," Phoenix  had muttered.

 

The Phoenix's patient had been slashed in the back the night before, and as usual, she had to take a good deal of time cleaning the wound.  Klashtooth was her babysitter this day, Razz was training her children, and Chategris was out on 'business.'  She didn't ask what the business was.

 

Wearing the surgical gloves she kept in her messenger bag, she sewed up the mutant in front of her, sent some of the tingly light from her hands into his body, and  then sent him on his way. 

 

"You haven't been around so much," Klashtooth said when the patient had left.  "We were beginning to wonder if The Children of the Phoenix had a mother."

 

She eyed him suspiciously.  "Where did you hear The Children of the Phoenix?"

 

"Oh, it's all over," he chuckled, and leaned back on his hands.  "The Children of the Phoenix stop the bad guys, and then The Phoenix herself heals them."

 

"That's not funny," Phoenix stuffed her supplies in her messenger bag.

 

"It's the truth, isn't it?" Klashtooth's voice wasn't teasing anymore.  "You heal our enemies as willingly as you heal us."

 

"They are your enemies, Klashtooth," she said, moving from her cross legged position to her knees. "Not mine.  Even if they were mine, they have every right to be healed as much as you do."

 

"The great healing martyr doesn't become you, Phoenix," he said, also moving to his knees. 

 

She sighed.  "I am not being a martyr, nor am I trying to be a martyr.  I am simply doing..." what was she doing?  "...doing what I am told."

 

"Told?" Klashtooth scoffed, "by who?"

 

"Whom," she corrected.

 

Klashtooth let out a small snarl.  "Told by whom?" his voice was thin.

 

She looked at the mutant rabbit, both of his eyes on the side of his head, making it hard to pick a place to look him in the eye.  "By my conscious," she said.

 

"Oh," he chuckled, "you still have one of those."

 

"It is because of our Phenix's conscious that she is here in the first place, eh, ma cherie?"  Chategris dropped from somewhere above them, a group of six of his men and women dropping behind him. 

 

"Oui," Phoenix said carefully.  "It is."

 

Chategris smiled at her, and waved at Klashtooth to dismiss him.  "If he does not give you the respect you deserve," he said, his eyes flicking to the rabbit, "let me know, and I will rectify it."

 

Phoenix glanced at Klashtooth, who did not look as sure of himself as he did a moment ago.  "We were only talking, Chategris," she said.  "He has a right to ask questions, and have his fears allayed just like anyone else."

 

"Fears?" Klashtooth turned full on toward her, and she jumped slightly.  "I don't fear--"

 

Chategris hissed loudly, and stood in front of Klashtooth between he and the Phoenix.  "Go," he said in a growly voice.  "Now."

 

Klashtooth did as he was told.

 

Chategris turned back to her, a smile on his face, "I am sorry, ma cherie," he said in French.  "Apparently he doesn't like being told the obvious."

 

She shook her head, not entirely sure how her attempt at smoothing things over had gone so wrong.

 

"I, however, am fine with the obvious," he continued, dropping down to his knees so he was on the floor with her.  "And the obvious answer to your business building question is T.C.R.I."

 

Phoenix blinked.  "What?"

 

"The building with the men in business suits that have triplets working there," he looked highly amused.  "The business is T.C.R.I.  It is in Brooklyn."

 

"You found it?" she broke out into a huge smile, and threw her hands around his neck.  "You found the building?"

 

Chategris wrapped his arms about her waist, so that he pressed her to his chest.  "You doubt me, ma cherie?  I told you I would keep my eyes open."  He pressed his nose into the crick of her neck and purred.

 

Phoenix pushed herself away.  "They were very open," she said, scooting back out of his reach, leaving his paw resting on his thighs.

 

"My eyes are always open, ma cherie," he said in that purring voice.  "Especially for you."

 

She cleared her throat, and switched to English.  "Thank you, Chategris.  You don't know how much it means to know where that building is."

 

"Tell me why you need to know about the building, and I will help you," he said.

 

She shook her head.  "We don't need help," she assured him.  "We just needed to know where the building was."

 

***

 

Standing in the alleyway across from the T.C.R.I building, the little family of four looked up at the highrise.

 

"How are we going to get in?"  Aries asked.

 

No one answered.

 

"Why don't we go in the front door?" Aries suggested.

 

"How exactly are we supposed to do that?" Medusa asked.  "Just walk in the locked door while the alarm is going off?"

 

"We could pick the lock."

 

"Do you know to pick a lock, wool-for-brains?"

 

"Stop!" Phoenix hissed.  "We can get in, we just have to figure out how."

 

"What if we went in the air ducts?"  Aries said.

 

"None of us can fit in the air ducts," Arcos hissed.

 

"Wait," Phoenix turned around to face her children.  "The three of you can't fit in an air duct."

 

"Are you sure you can fit in an air duct?" Medusa asked.

 

"We won't know until I try, will we?" she answered.

 

Trying to stay in the shadows, the four of the crept over to the back of the building.

 

"I don't see any air ducts," Aries said.

 

"They have to have air ducts, they have to breath!" Medusa cuffed Aries on the horn.

 

"There!"  Arcos ran over to a grate on the side of the building above their heads.  "It's probably in between the first and second floor.  Aries, come here."  The ram came over to his brother, who hoisted him up onto his shoulders.  The height of the two easily reached the grate, and Aries had no problems at all pulling it off from the wall, screws and all.

 

"I think you can fit in there, Mama," Arcos said, lifting her up.  She had to stand on his head, but that made her tall enough to be able to jump and get to the lip of the shaft.

 

"Meet me at the front door," she disappeared into the darkness.

 

The three mutants crept around the building to the front windows and began creeping toward the door, when Medusa gave out a squeak and bolted back to the side of the building.  Arcos and Aries followed suit.

 

"What?" Arcos whispered loudly.  "Why'd we have to come back here?"

 

"There is a receptionist in the lobby!" Medusa hissed.

 

"How can there by a receptionist in the lobby, it's the middle of the night."

 

"You think I can't see?" Medusa put her tiny hands on what would have been her hips had she had any.  "Go take a look."

 

Arcos and Aries poked their heads around to the window, and sure enough, there was a woman, staring straight ahead, sitting at the main lobby desk.  The boys made a made dash back to their sister.  "What are we going to do?"

 

"What if Mama pops out of the air shaft in the lobby?"

 

Arcos pointed his finger at Aries, "We break the window"  He then pointed at his sister, "Medusa, you grab Mama and then we all run like the blue blazes back to the warehouse."

 

"The blue blazes?" Aries asked, raising his eyebrows.

 

"I'm trying to watch my..." he then mimicked Phoenix's voice, "language."

 

The three of them giggled, but stopped when they heard a soft cry, "Kids!"

 

Going back around the building, they saw their mother's head poking out of the shaft.  "There's a receptionist in the lobby," she said.

 

"We saw her," Arcos told her.  "What now?"

 

"I'm going to go up to the second floor and open the fire escape door," she said.  "If the alarms haven't changed any from when I was school, I think I can remember how to make sure it doesn't go off."

 

"You know how to make alarms not go off?" Aries asked, a little too loudly.

 

"Shhhh!"

 

"Get ready for the door to open," she said, and disappeared back into the shaft.  After about 15 minutes, the door to the second floor escape opened, and her children scrambled in.

 

"Wow, the alarm didn't go off," Aries noted.  "You go, Mama."

 

"Come on," she whispered, "we have a lot of space to cover.  We need to try to find those scientists."

 

"How do we even know they're here," Medusa said.  "What if they're not?  What do we even look for?"

 

"I know they're here," Phoenix said definitively.

 

"How?" Medusa countered.

 

"Because this the building we ran out of."

 

The Children of the Phoenix stopped as their mother continued on forward through the isles of cubicles. 

 

"But this is just an office building," Aries said, catching up with her.

 

"No, it isn't," she emphasized each word.  "We just have to find--" she stopped in mid-sentence.  She turned and looked at each of her three children.  "It's upstairs," she said in a whisper.  "We had to go down lots of stairs."

 

To the stairs they went, going through each floor, and finding only cubicles, and more cubicles, and more cubicles.

 

"We're not going to have enough time to go through this whole place, Mama," Arcos warned.

 

"Then we'll come back tomorrow if we have to."

 

They emerged into a hallway, and opened the first door they came to.  It was filled with rows of cubicles, just like the other floors, but at each chair behind each desk, sat a man in a black suit, with black hair, with black eyes staring straight ahead.

 

Phoenix took a deep breath in, and then began a scream, but Arcos clamped his paw around her mouth before more than the beginning of it had escaped.  "They're not moving," he whispered.  "They don't see us."

 

Upon closer inspection, they could see that each of the men was connected to a tube, which went into the desk at which they were sitting. 

 

"What is this?" Medusa asked.

 

"I don't know," Aries said, "but there aren't any scientists here, so I say we move."

 

Every door on the next four floors showed the same display, the men in the black suits all hooked up to cubicles.

 

"How many of these things are there?" Phoenix asked in horror.

 

When they opened the door to the next floor, the hallway was significantly different.  Gone was the carpet, the wall decor, the painted walls themselves.  Everything was made of metal, riveted into the floor and walls.  They were afraid they'd make too much noise walking on it, but when they did, they found they made almost no sound at all. 

 

"What is this made of?" Medusa asked as she slithered along the floor.  "I haven't felt anything like this before."

 

"There's a door," Arcos pointed to a door that looked like it came right out of a sci-fi movie.  It had a port window, and upon looking into it, they could see a dark haired man sitting on the floor.

 

He looked up and saw them, and shrank back toward the wall.

 

"It's OK," Arcos said, "we're here to get you out."

 

"Get me out?" his voice as muffled through the door.  The man stood up and came to the door.  "Really?  Get me out?"

 

"Shhhhh!" all four of them hissed. 

 

The man put his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide.

 

They all stepped away from the door and looked at it.

 

"How do we open it?" Aries asked, cracking his knuckles.

 

"I have no idea..." Phoenix said slowly.

 

"This looks like it might be a control panel," Medusa put her hand over a sickening-pink bubble next to the door.  "It looks like it takes a card key."

 

"You don't have the card key!?" the man exclaimed from behind the door.

 

"Shhhhh!!"

 

"We don't work here," Phoenix said.

 

They all considered the lock, Medusa with her hand on her chin, Phoenix chewing her lip, Arcos with his brow furrowed and eyes slitted, and Aries with his mouth twisted to the right.

 

"How are we going to open it?" Arcos said it this time.

 

"We don't have the key," Medusa said.

"We don't know how to get the key," Phoenix added.

 

"Well, there are two options.  Try to open it, or leave him," Aries said.

 

"We can't leave him," Phoenix whispered harshly.

 

"You can't leave me!" the man cried at the same time.

 

"SHHHHHHH!!!!"

 

The man put his hand over his mouth again.

 

"If we try to open it forcibly, "Arcos said, "we also have two options.  Either the door will open, or it won't open."

 

"It seems like our only option," Phoenix said, backing away from the door.  "Boys, you're up."

 

Arcos and Aries grabbed what handhold they could of the door and pulled.  Then they pulled the other way.  Then they pushed.  The door didn't budge.  With a curse, Aries grabbed a hold of the bubble, and tore the entire thing out of the wall.

 

The door opened.

 

The alarm also went off.

 

"Quick," Phoenix ran toward the stairs, "down stairs!"

 

The five of them ran to the stairs, and down them, only to be met with several men in black suits holding futuristic looking guns.

 

"Oh dear," said Phoenix.

 

Bright sickening-pink lasers started zipping by them. 

 

Phoenix backed up, took out her slingshot, and began pelting the men with the makeshift bullets that Aries had constructed by taking empty shells from the military dump and cinching in the ends to make a point.  Most of them found their marks, and when they hit the men, sparks went flying.

 

Medusa speedily wrapped herself around the scientist, who was screaming non-stop.  She made sure one of her coils covered his mouth.  Then, she took out her whip, and began aiming at guns.

 

Aries huffed, raised his ax, and Arcos roared, his sledge hammer in the air, and wove in and out of laser fire, until they got to the business men.  Then, they began smashing.

 

As the children wove expertly in and out of the bodies and lasers, several of the men worked their way toward Phoenix.  She didn't want to back up, but she had to in order to avoid the men coming too close.  She shot with a speed she'd never done in her practice, and she rolled, and jumped, and tumbled, coming up to shoot again.

 

She hit one of them straight in eye, causing his head to crack to the side.  He didn't cry out in pain at all, and she hit him again in the chest.  The bullet caused his shirt to rip open.

 

The man was almost on top of her and Phoenix fell to the floor and screamed.

 

Where his belly should have been, was one of the brains.  It sat in his stomach, like in a little cozy case, with its eyes closed.  It opened them, they were a sickening-green, the same hue as the pink, and it let out a strange scream at Phoenix, just as she screamed at it.

 

Without thinking, she kicked at it, "Stay away from me!" she screeched, "stay away from me!"  One of her blows it the brain, it screamed again, obviously in pain, so she kicked again.  It fell toward her, and she rolled out of the way, standing back up again, her slingshot in her hand.  She posed ready to fire, but the man didn't move.

 

"There's too many of them!" Medusa cried, "we have to get out of here."

 

"Get to a window," Arcos shouted.  Twisted their way to the lower floor door, and opened it, to be met by robots with brains in their stomachs.

 

Arcos let out a great howl, and barreled through the line, each of the others following in his wake.  They reached  one of the office doors,and ran into the room.  It was empty of the men.  They ran to the window, Arcos still in the lead, and he jumped through the glass into the air.  Medusa followed him, and Phoenix felt herself be scooped up by Aries, who jumped out of the window after his siblings.

 

Phoenix felt the lurch of free fall, before the tremendous crash of landing on the fire landing on the 4th floor.   Arcos and Medusa were already on the street, the scientist in Medusa's grasp seemed to be unconscious.  Aries jumped down floor to floor on the fire landings until hitting the pavement, putting Phoenix down, and bolting away.

 

When they were sure they were out of the sights of the robot-riding aliens and alien-in-the-belly-business men, they stopped.  All of them doubled over to catch their breath.  Medusa uncoiled the scientist, who stood unsteadily, so that Phoenix had to prop him up.

 

"Are you hurt?"

 

The man touched various body parts, and shook his head.  "No, no I don't think so."  He looked from Phoenix, to Medusa, to Aries, to Arcos.  "Th-thank you," he said.

 

All four of them said nothing.  That was the last thing Phoenix had expected out of his mouth.  "We need to get you to a hospital," she said, "and we can't walk down here."

 

Again, the scientist was scooped up by Medusa, and they made their way to the roofs of the buildings.  They went at a leisurely  pace, and Medusa asked, "Why did those aliens kidnap you?"

 

"They call themselves Kraang," he explained.  "They want to come to take over Earth, but they can't for some reason.  They have this substance called mutagen--"

 

"Mutagen!" Phoenix exclaimed, "that's where it comes from?"

 

"Yes," said the scientist.  "It is supposed to make Earth habitable for them, but it isn't working right.  They need scientists from Earth to make it work the way its supposed to."

 

"So it isn't supposed to turn people into animal hybrids?" Phoenix asked.

 

"No," the scientist sighed.  "Although I'm not sure how many it has turned into animal hybrids."

 

"Lots," Aries muttered.

 

"It can also change animals into human hybrids," the scientist said.  "And into....monsters."

 

Chategris' words from long ago came back to Phoenix's mind.  _"Make no mistake, we are all monsters."_

 

They were close enough to the hospital that the children stopped and dropped to the ground.  "I'll walk you to the hospital," Phoenix said.  "They can't go any further."

 

The scientist looked at them again one by one, and asked, "Who are you?"

 

Arcos smiled proudly, "We're the Children of the Phoenix."


	16. Chapter 16

A/N:  It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT 2012, those whose stories will never be told.  I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like.  Therefore, there are no Turtles or Turtle friends in this story (yet). 

~~

 

The straps bit into her shoulders, and again at her thighs as she struggled against the bonds.  A sharp pain pierced her abdomen, and she screamed.  A spaceship-riding Kraang stood above her, chittering in some language she didn't understand.  There were chitters all around her, and then the pain in her abdomen exploded.

 

The Phoenix bolted upright, breathing heavily, all three of her children around her bed.  She clutched her lower abdomen, which cramped slightly, and tried to catch her breath.

 

"You had a nightmare," Medusa said, "you screamed in your sleep."

 

Phoenix felt silly, she hadn't dreamt about the Kraang, the aliens had a name now, for almost 15 years.    "I'm alright, kids," she assured them.  "It was just a nightmare."  The sun was just rising, the air outside was pink and orange.  She pushed herself out of bed, "I'll start breakfast."

 

She walked to the dining room, started coffee for the kids, the tea kettle for herself, and opened the fridge to see what she could come up with for breakfast.  There was fresh fruit, and a bag of corn.  Time to go shopping, she thought, as the pulled the fruit out and placed it on the table.

 

"Mama," Medusa said, as the coffee pot began to spit and fizzle with the last remaining drops of water steaming through the percolator, "that scientist the other night...."

 

"Yes?" she asked.

 

"...he said that the mutagen can change animals into...people like us."

 

"Yes, I recall him saying that."

 

"Do you think we were humans or animals first?"  She looked at her mother with round, black eyes, plaintive and worried.

 

This same thought had been on Phoenix's mind, as well.  She had strong suspicions about each of the five of them, but since she couldn't prove anything she said, "I don't know Curly Que."

 

Medusa looked hurt.

 

"And it doesn't matter,"  she went on.  "What matters is what you are now, and what you choose to be in this moment.  Not what you were at any other time in the past."  She smiled, "The past is just that, past."

 

Phoenix worked in her garden that day, after a rigorous training with the kids.  They went to the cargo bay  to talk, she chuckled, let's be honest, to brag.  She couldn't blame them.  They had done good.  The afternoon was wearing on, and her three children had not returned.  There's no need to be worried, Phoenix thought, they're all together.  She breathed deep to calm herself.  It was rare that desperation came to her any longer, but fear filling her being still did  not feel good, by any stretch of the imagination.  When Razz swung in from the garden window, she jumped to her feet, panic rising in her throat.

 

Razz smiled, "I'm a friend," he called in an amused voice.

 

Phoenix let out a huge breath, and sank back down in the chair in which she'd been sitting.  "I thought something had happened to the kids."

 

"Nothing that doesn't normally happen to them," the amusement was still in his voice, and he had a twinkle in his eye that the mother in Phoenix tried to ignore.  "You don't need to be so worried, Phoenix," he said upon catching her glance.  "You're children are...choosy."

 

"Aries is not choosy," she state flatly.

 

"No," Razz agreed.  "Aries is not choosy."  When he saw her frown, he chuckled.  "He's been with the same girl for three months.  


"Oh," she stood up and rolled her eyes.  "What an accomplishment.  She must be good at what she does," she clicked her tongue, "because Myra is as dumb as a bag of bricks."

 

Razz laughed.   "Not everyone has your restraint."

 

"It isn't restraint," she told him.  "It's personal integrity."  She cocked her head to the side and smiled at him.  "But that isn't why you came here," she said.

 

"No," he walked toward her, his tail swishing heavily from side to side.  "I came because your children said you needed fighting lessons."

 

Phoenix gasped.  "They said what?!"

 

The smile was still on the reptile's face.  "They said you were awesome with a slingshot," he told her, "but that you desperately needed to learn something about hand-to-hand combat."

 

She puffed up her chest and looked up at the mutant.  "I do not," she said, offended.

 

"They told me about your last escapade," he crossed his arms.

 

"What was wrong with our last escapade?" she demanded.

 

"You were almost squished."

 

"I was not almost squished."

 

"That isn't what I've heard," he said.

 

"So now everyone at the bay is laughing at me because I'm always getting squished when my kids go out and play superheroes?"  She didn't like the sound of that at all.

 

Razz laughed, "No," he said, leaning against the wall.  "Your children have raved about what a wonderful shot you are.  Medusa came and told me...a more accurate version of the story, later."

 

"And no one else heard her?" Phoenix asked.

 

Razz shook his head.  "You have kept my secrets, I will keep yours."

 

A thought flashed into Phoenix's mind, "How were you and Medusa in a place where she could tell you something no one else heard?"  Her voice was hard, and her eyes flashed.

 

The smile vanished off of Razz's face.

 

"No!" she held up her and shook her head.  "Don't tell me.  Medusa hasn't said anything to me, and I don't really want to know."  She wanted to know very much, and cursed herself silently for her 'personal integrity.'

 

Razz grabbed his chance to change the subject and ran with it.  "Come and let me see how you fight," he headed toward the back of the floor to the gym.  "If it is anything like how you dance, you can't be too bad at it."

 

She showed him her moves and her practice with the slingshot.  She was surprised to realize she felt self-conscious in front of him, and then realized, she'd never practiced in front of anyone but her children.  When she had been in a real fighting situation, she'd been too scared or been concentrating too hard to be self-conscious.

 

"Well done," Razz said, his arms crossed over his scaly chest.  "You're children were telling the truth."

 

Phoenix smiled.  "Flattery will get you nowhere," she said playfully.

 

"Believe me, there will be no flattery," he said, quite serious.  "This is fighting for your life.  I will be brutally honest, and you will learn how to defend yourself, not just cover those in the front lines.  You cannot rely on your children to come and save you, that puts their lives in more danger."

 

The smile vanished off of Phoenix's face.

 

"It will take me years to teach you to use your body force on an opponent, you're so little," he said, twisting his mouth as he appraised her.  "We're going to concentrate on you quickly disabling an opponent, and getting far enough way to use the slingshot.  You're good with the slingshot."

 

"Thank you," Phoenix said quietly, feeling quite out of her element.

 

"You're going to use a knife," he said matter-of-factly. 

 

Phoenix bristled at his tone, but told herself to calm down.  He was the teacher, he had her best interest at heart...didn't he?  "Razz," she asked, "why are here teaching me this?"

 

He looked almost hurt by the question.  "Because we're friends."

 

They started with her holding a pencil, so that she could do her tumbling with an item in her hand.  It took her two weeks to graduate from the pencil to a butter knife, and three more weeks to graduate to a sharp knife that could actually cut something.  Each time she used a more dangerous utensil in her hand, she felt she had been knocked back to square one.

 

"You need to put your hair up," Razz told her, after catching her by her long locks for the third time.  "It's too much of a liability." 

 

She put it in a braid, laying down her back, but he was able to grab that too.

 

She put the braid around her head like a turban.  "Mama," Aries said, "you look really dumb."

 

She put her hair in two braids and twisted it on the sides of her head.  "We're not in The Rebellion, Mama," Arcos said.  "You don't make a good Princess Leia."

 

"Oh," Medusa's reptilian face lit up.  "I have an idea."  She darted over to the bookcase, grabbed two pencils from the tin can sitting on one of the shelves, and darted back to the gym.  She parted Phoenix's hair in two, twisted it elegantly at the back of her head, and secured it with the pencils.  It was tight,and Phoenix had to make herself not wince when she twisted the pencils in her head.  "There!"

 

"Yes," Razz and her two boys agreed.  "That looks good."

 

When she went out with her kids, she didn't bring anything but her bullets and slingshot.  The few fights they got into, she was able to take care of herself fine, she felt, with a well placed kick to a stomach or leg.

 

Razz was patient with her, she suspected much more patient that with the Grey Cats, or her own children.  They would go over an exercise a hundred times until he felt she could do it without his assistance.  He began to incorporate her uneven bars with her little, sharp kitchen knife, her children cheering her on.  Sometimes, he would have her rest, and then do a little "practice," as he called it, with the other three.

 

These sessions showed Phoenix how poor she was at this fighting thing, even from a distance.  Razz, despite his slight build, was brutal when sparring with even Arcos, the largest of her children.  He used his tail as a weapon in a way that knocked the big bear across the room.  "You left your flank exposed," he almost yelled as Arcos went flying.  He deflected his sledgehammer with a punch to Arcos' arm, "Why are you trying to barrel me over?"  More than once had the big bear on the floor in under five minutes.

 

Aries fared no better.  He would try to use his horns when he got very close to Razz, but they rarely made contact with his lithe body.   "You're too slow to do that, you know better."  Razz easily danced out of the way of the ax, "Showing off in front of your mother isn't helping you any."

 

Phoenix now saw how he got his name.

 

Medusa did the best against him, because she could keep up with him in speed.  She rarely hit him with her whip, but she kept up with all of his moves, staying on him.  "You have to be faster than that."   He finally brought her down by leaping behind her and grabbing her tail before she could spin on him, and threw her up into the uneven bars.

 

Phoenix fought frustration at the display.  None of them did well against Razz, and they had gone to him to say she need training in self-defense.  She felt her face getting hot, and in a huff, she stood up and said, "After you rest, come play Catch the Monkey with me, Razz."

 

"Catch the Monkey?" he asked, taking a drink of the cucumber and mint water Phoenix always provided.

 

"I'm the monkey, and you try to catch me."

 

Razz smiled. "That's it?"

 

"You want to try and beat the best time," Arcos explained.  "The faster you do it, the more of a win you get."

 

Razz put the glass down.  "How do we start?"

 

Phoenix went to the middle of the gym and put her hands at her sides.  "You just try to catch me."

 

"Alright," he said.  He then made a mad dash for her position.

 

She flipped backwards, and then used the vaulting horse to leap up to the uneven bars.  Razz chased her, tried to catch her, tried to anticipate her moves, but she managed to elude him until he finally caught her with his tail as she was flipping over him.

 

"!5 minutes, 22 seconds!"  Arcos called out.

 

Razz came over to her and offered her a hand up.  "You didn't tell me you could do that!"   He was obviously impressed.

 

"What did you think I did with all the gymnastic moves I showed you?"

 

"Not that," he laughed.  "If I'd known you could do that, we would have been doing this entire thing differently!"

 

***

 

"Here you go, Mama," Arcos held the knife out to his mother. 

 

She took the knife gingerly.  Like her slingshot, it was a work of art in and of itself.  Medusa had found a large carving knife on a dump run, and Aries had sharpened it to a razor's edge, and then carved a wooden handle to replace the plastic one.   It was similar to her slingshot, in the shape of a bird, with the beak making a kind of hook at the end of the handle.  Arcos had painted it beautifully with a light wash of warm colors, so the outstanding carving shone in relief.

 

"Wow," Phoenix breathed.  "You boys missed your calling."

 

Arcos and Aries looked at each other and laughed softly.

 

When Razz saw it, he whistled.  "Quite a weapon," he admired.  "Time to learn how to use it."

 

Razz had changed his strategy for teaching her.  He now concentrated on transferring her ability to get away from a pursuer to getting to a pursuer.

 

She bristled at first, "You want me to what?"

 

"You're going to come at whoever is coming at you," he told her.

 

"And do what?"

 

"I'll show you," he smiled.

 

He taught her how to evade an attack, and use her knife to damage her opponent.  She disliked having to think that she would have to go to someone as opposed to away, and she didn't like pretending to slice Razz open with the wooden practice knife Aries had carved for her.  But for the first time since this 'crime fighting' had begun, she felt she could hold her own.

 

She got her chance to prove it to herself not long after she'd felt that way.

 

For the first time, she took her beautifully carved knife to clinic with her.  Clinic was busy, and just over the edge of the Grey Cat's territory, where Chategris had told her not to go all those years ago.  She didn't obey him, she went where the unbidden thought told her to, and this is where it told her.  Because of the location, her three children didn't join her this night, all of them feeling that their presence would do more harm than good.  They stayed close by, in Chategris' territory, and told her to yell if she needed them.

 

A young boy, a human, came to her, with a slash down his cheek.  She didn't know how he knew she was there, but somehow he did.  She smiled, and pointed to his cheek.  "I can help you with that."

 

He didn't say anything, but walked up to her.  He was about 14 or 15 she guessed, not yet having had his second spurt during puberty.  He was taller than her, but then, that was no great feat.  He was too skinny, she felt, and he had great black circles under his eyes.  She knew what that meant, but she wasn't here for that hurt.

 

"How long ago did this happen?" she asked.

 

"Just a little while ago," he said.

 

She examined his cheek and found it was indeed a fresh wound, barely having scabbed over.  "I'm going to wash it, and then sew it up, alright?  It's pretty deep."

 

He nodded.

 

She was surprised at the boy's stoic attitude when she sewed up the wound slowly.  "You're doing a good job," she would mutter occasionally, "good boy."  She was only slightly aware that she was doing it, he was so young, she would have tried to sooth anyone that age in the same way.   She put her needle in a jar of antiseptic that she used to disinfect her things, and sat up.  "All fixed."

 

He looked sad, rather than in pain.  "Thanks," he said quietly, and then began to back up, still facing her.

 

Her alarm bells went off.

 

 _Put the jar down,_ the unbidden thought told her, and she obeyed immediately, and stood up.

 

From out of the shadows came four men, each holding a knife.  Her mind raced; she was surrounded, she didn't have anywhere to back up and shoot the slingshot.  All four of them lunged toward her at the same time.  With almost not thought, Phoenix took out her slingshot, armed it with two of her bullets, and shot at the man who was farthest away from her.  The bullets struck him in the chest, and he let out a low cry, looking down as blood pooled over his shirt. 

 

She then crouched, and pushed herself along the asphalt toward one of her assailants.  Everything that Razz had told her, practiced with her, fussed at her for came flooding into her mind, as if presenting itself for her to choose from the buffet of attacks.  Her hand grabbed her knife.  The man she was closest to bend down to grab at her, and she struck out with her knife as she slid past him, slicing at his hand.  He let out a scream and a curse in her direction.

 

Once past him, she somersaulted backward a few times to gain some distance between herself and the three men.  It gave her very little, not enough to shoot with the slingshot and still be able to face off the other two.  _Go toward your opponent,_ the unbidden thought echoed one of the Razz's instructions.  She ran at the closest man to her, Stay down, she remembered Razz saying, don't let your opponent's hands get you.  She half ran and half slid toward the man, reaching out with her knife and slicing at his ankle just as he sliced at her.  He fell to the side, his tendon cut, and that was the only thing that saved her from being slashed.

 

A great roar resounded from above her head, and from the building behind her, Arcos, Aries, and Medusa came plunging into the alley. 

 

In the blink of an eye, Medusa had coiled around one of the men, her head looming high over him, and began to squeeze.  Phoenix could hear the cracking of bones as her coils got tighter and tighter.

 

Arcos grabbed one of the uninjured men by the knife arm, and picked him up with a sideways motion.  A sickening crunch echoed through the night as the man's arm went the opposite direction of the rest of him.  Arcos threw him against the building, where the man slumped down and didn't move.

 

Aries went straight for the man with the slashed hand, his head down, his horns in front of him.  He barreled into the man's upper chest.  The man's head snapped back, and he let out a grunt as his body hit the wall with Aries' horns still pressed against him.

 

Then the alley was silent. 

 

Medusa released the man she was holding, and his body slumped to the ground.  It was grossly misshapen, and Phoenix looked away.

 

"Are you OK?" Arcos came up to her, concern on his face. 

 

"I'm fine," she said.  "I wasn't hurt.  I just think I scraped my hip on the road."

 

Medusa slithered up to her, and wrapped her in her body, and then sprang to the fire escape, and then to the roof.  "Time to go home," she said.  As her brothers followed her, her mother didn't argue.


	17. Chapter 17

A/N:  It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT 2012, those whose stories will never be told.  I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like.  

~~~

She heard the "fancy car", as opposed to the "superhero car", drive into the back of the warehouse, and then the stomps of her two sons coming up the stairwell.

 

"Mama," Medusa, who was the only one who didn't stomp when she moved, called, "you won't believe what we found!"

 

"Or what we found out!"  Arcos sank into the couch, spreading his legs and arms.

 

"Move over, couch-hog," Aries shoved him in the shoulder.

 

"Get your arms down, " Medusa said at the same time, pushing his arms off of the back of the sofa so she could drape herself over it.

 

"We found a laptop," Aries held up the closed device.

 

"You already have several laptops," Phoenix said, "what do you need with another one?"

 

"This one's battery works!" Medusa settled into a comfortable position on the back of the couch. "So we can use it out without it being plugged in!"

 

"We went to a wi-fi spot," Arcos said, "and surfed the 'net in the car."

 

"Surfed the 'net in the car..." Phoenix repeated absently as she made herself a cup of tea.

 

"Yeah, the internet," Aries said slowly.  "You know, the world wide web?"

 

"I know the internet!" Phoenix snapped.  "I haven't lived under a rock for the past twenty years."

 

The three of them laughed.  "Nope, just in a haunted warehouse," Medusa said.

 

"With no internet access," Arcos quipped.

 

Phoenix folded her arms over her chest, "So what is so special about surfing the 'net this time, when you've plugged the computers in before and surfed the 'net in wi-fi spots?"

 

"We found this website," Medusa said.

 

"You do know what a website is, right?" Aries asked.

 

"You're cruisin' for a bruisin', mister," Phoenix muttered.

 

"The website is for reporting strange sightings around the city," Medusa continued as if she hadn't been interrupted.

 

"Mama," Arcos leaned forward on the couch, "a bunch of it is about the Kraang!"

 

Phoenix took a sip of her tea, and sat down on the arm of the couch.  "What about the Kraang?"

 

"About sightings and what they're doing," he said.  "Lots of people have seen those identical men in those business suits around warehouses, moving crates and boxes."

 

"And people ask, why would men in business suits be moving crates, at night, no less?"  Medusa said.

 

"Did the website say where any of these warehouses were?"  Phoenix asked.

 

"They sure did," Aries said with a smile.  "Guess where we're going to night?"

 

That night, they all piled into the flat-black, plain-as-jane, crime-fighting car and drove to a warehouse block on the other side of the city.  Medusa was driving, as she was the best driver of the bunch, and this car didn't have a sunroof, so there was no cool jumping-out-of-the-top-of-the-car moves she could do to impress 'bad guys'.  Arcos was in the passenger seat with Aries and Phoenix in the back.

 

"It has to be in one of these buildings," Arcos said.  "We can wait and stake out who comes out of any of them."

 

"No," Phoenix said.  "Medusa, park the car in an alley.  We're going to go into the buildings and see what they're holding."

 

Medusa parked the car, and the four of them snuck into the alley way between the two innermost buildings.

 

"What good does it do for us to look at what they're holding?" Aries asked in a whisper.

 

"Because I doubt the Kraang are transporting furniture, or Persian rugs," Phoenix answered.

 

Getting into a warehouse was a thoughtless task for them, and the first one was dutifully filled with crates.  Prying one open, it was filled with boxes of slinkies.   "You think the Kraang need stuff to play with?" Arcos held one up and let it flip off the side of the crate.

 

The next warehouse housed crates with plates and serving dishes, and blank CDs.  "We can replenish our kitchen," Aries said, holding up a plate with blue flowers on it.

 

"We're not stealing plates," Phoenix snapped.

 

"I was just kidding," Aries muttered.

 

The the third warehouse, Aries was the first to get a crate pried open.  "Mama," he said, "I think we found the right one."

 

They all gathered around the crate, the kids at the sides and Phoenix at the back between the crate and the wall.  Inside of it were stacked clear canisters filled with an almost turquoise colored mixture splattered with darker blue and green.  It reminded Phoenix very much of a lava lamp. 

 

Medusa held up a canister.  "What is this?"

 

"I bet it's mutagen," Phoenix said.

 

"What are they going to do with all this?" Arcos spread his hands to indicate the warehouse full of crates.  "Turn everyone into a mutant?"

 

"I don't know," Phoenix said.  "Maybe it does something else besides turn people into mutants."

 

"Put the canister down, freaks!" a voice burst through the door. 

 

In the open doorway stood four mutant turtles.  They looked rather young to her, a little more than boys if her ability to judge the age of mutants hadn't mislead her.  Each of them was holding a different weapon, none of them projectiles, and had their hands and feet wrapped and pads on their elbows and knees.  Each wore a different colored eye mask; one blue, one red, one purple, and one orange.

 

"Oh look," Medusa said with a seductive hiss.  "Turtle dumplings for a midnight snack."

 

Phoenix had instinctively backed up when she heard the voice boom, and seeing these turtles in fighting poses, she whipped out her slingshot--and then everyone moved at once!

 

Phoenix leapt up and behind her onto the crates near the wall, obscured by the shadows.  Medusa had taken out her whip, Aries his ax, and Arcos his sledgehammer.  There was a mass of green, and brown, and white blur before each of the individuals became distinct to her eyesight. These turtles were fast,  faster than Medusa, whom Phoenix considered a smudge in the air around her when she struck.  She was striking again and again, and still missing her mark, albeit just barely, but he was still leaping out of her way.   She followed the orange masked turtle, snapping her whip and her body, as he parred with a set of nun-chucks.

 

Aries broke off to fight with the purple masked turtle holding a staff.  Both swung and parried, the turtle flipped into the air, and Aries strafed out of his way.  The staff hit home, and causes Aries to fall onto one knee, but it was only a moment, before he got up and ran toward the turtle with his head down, horns forward.

 

Arcos was facing off both the red masked and blue masked turtles.  His sledgehammer whooshed through the air, striking the ground where only moments before a turtle had stood.  One came at him, and he managed to bat him away, and then the other, landing a kick on the bear's side.

 

Phoenix loaded her slingshot, and with two at a time, began pelting down bullets on whatever turtle seemed to be getting closest to one of her children.  The bullets bounced off of their shells, not having enough force with only her slingshot to penetrate their carapaces.  She began to aim at their legs, the only thing she felt she could actually hit and do some damage.  She began concentrating solely on the two who were on Arcos, but they just let the bullets bounce of their shells, or dance out of the way when they might have it an arm, leg, or head.

 

"Raph!" said the blue masked one, "the crates!"

 

"I'm on it," said the red one, and before Phoenix could blink, projectiles were whizzing toward her.  She ducked and dodged, and saw a throwing star lodge into the wood of a crate next to her head.  She heard another come toward her, and felt a sting on her upper arm as it grazed her.  She let out her breath between her teeth in a harsh hiss, and jumped down from the top of the crates to the floor, where she could use the crates as cover. 

 

She continued to shower bullets at Arcos' attackers, moving about the room to change her position to make herself a harder target.   The red masked one managed to land on Arcos' back and throw something else at her that he hadn't been holding a moment before, while the blue one landed another kick, this one in the bear's chest.  They're so fast, her mind reeled, they're so fast.

 

 _To the left,_ said the unbidden thought.

 

She moved her sight to the left, to see that the purple masked turtle was against the wall, shaking his head, and Aries was moving toward the orange masked one to help Medusa.  She aimed her slingshot in his direction, and then her eyes darted back to Arcos.

 

The blue masked turtle had his sword over his head, ready to fall upon Arcos as he lay on the ground.

 

"Let go of my son!" she thundered, her voice echoed around the room, leaving a soft call of "...son...son....son."

 

The room froze, and everyone looked at her.  "You're...son?" the blue masked asked, his voice confused.

 

"You may be able to get us," Phoenix said, trying to keep her voice calm.  "But not before one of us get's him."  Her slingshot still faced the orange masked turtle, who was now having to face down both Medusa and Aries.

 

"Uh...guys," said the orange masked turtle.  "I don't wanna get got."

 

"Let my son go," Phoenix said.  "Lower your sword, and let him come here."

 

The blue masked one looked conflicted for a moment, and then lowered his curved sword.  "Alright," he said calmly.

 

"What?"  said the red masked one.  "Are you crazy?"  He stood with this three pronged knives ready to pounce in her direction.

 

"He's free," the blue masked one said, sheathing his sword. 

 

Arcos got up, and walked slowly over to his mother, breathing heavily.  Medusa and Aries didn't move.

 

"We are going to leave," Phoenix said.  "And you are not going to follow us."

 

There was a moment of silence, and then the blue masked one said, "OK," with finality, as if making a decision in his head.

 

Only then did Phoenix put her slingshot down.  When she did, Aries ran for her, and Medusa made a strike in her direction.  Without stopping, the boa constrictor wrapped herself around her mother, and leapt up on the crates.  Aries and Arcos were right behind her, as they jumped out of the window near the ceiling where they'd entered and made a mad dash to their car.

 

They were silent all the way home, with Medusa driving at breakneck speeds.  They all hurried up to the top of their warehouse, and the three children collapsed on the couch.

 

"Is anyone hurt?" Phoenix's voice was taut as she asked, berating herself for not having asked in the car. 

 

"I'm fine," Medusa said.

 

"I'm OK," said Aries at the same time.

 

"My chest is killing me," Arcos moaned.

 

She ran over to him, and put her hands on his torso, only to make him moan.  Fear grabbed her shoulders, she couldn't see any blood.  How did she know what to heal?  What if he had internal damage?  What if she couldn't help him?

 

 _See_ , said the unbidden thought.

 

See what?   I don't see anything!

 

 _See_ , it said again.

 

She tore at his open vest, to reveal his naked torso, and looked.  She still couldn't see the damage, but his face showed visible pain. 

 

I don't see anything!

 

_See!_

 

I don't see anything! 

 

Her eyes became unfocused as they filled with tears, and as they did, the glowing that wasn't glowing began to show in the objects around her.  Arcos' frame became illuminated with the  sight of life force flowing through him, and she could see what almost looked like a smudge around part of his side and his chest.

 

I see!

 

The fear drained from her body, starting at her head, and leaving her through her toes on the floor.  She put her hand gently on his side, and in the opposite order of her usual ministrations, she sent the healing energy that tingled in her hands into his side, her hands almost burning.  Arcos let out a slow breath, and when the smudge at his side had lessened in intensity, she did the same thing with his chest. 

 

"Thank you, Mama," he said softly.

 

"Get my medical bag," she ordered one of her other children.  She didn't know which one got it, but it appeared by her side.  She made a compress for bruises and broken bones, and wrapped it on top of each smudge in his glow.  "You'll be alright, Teddy Bear," she said softly, "I promise."

 

"I guess those were the ninjas in New York," Arcos said with a slight chuckle, trying to lighten the mood.

 

"It would appear so," Phoenix replied, her mood not at all light.

 

"Mama," Aries spoke for the first time, "they were pummeling us!"

 

"They were so fast," Medusa's voice was soft.  "I've never seen anyone move so fast, not even Razz or Crevan."

 

"They're right, Mama," Arcos said.  "There's no way we can beat them if we meet up with them again."

 

"Now we have to deal with aliens and ninja turtles?"  Aries' was peevish.

 

"That might be what the mutagen is for," Medusa surmised.  "Maybe they're making an army of mutant ninjas."

 

"It must have taken them years and years to get that good," Arcos said. 

 

"Maybe they're going to mutate people who are already ninjas?" Medusa suggested.

 

"The mutagen must mean a great deal to the Kraang if they're using mutants like this to guard it," Phoenix said.  "They're not as cavalier as your website," she glanced at Aries, "suggested."

 

"What are we going to do if we encounter them again, Mama?" Arcos asked.

 

"We're going to hope that we don't," Phoenix replied.

 

***

 

"...then she called him her son, Sensei."  Leonardo was sitting with his brothers around Master Splinter, describing the fight they had at the warehouse.

 

"And because she said that, he," Raphael pointed accusingly at his brother, "let them go!"

 

"Mikey was in a rather precarious position, Raph," Donetello pointed out.

 

"They were good fighters, Sensei," Leo went on, "not like the others we've been fighting."

 

"Well, the Kraang aren't going to have cream puffs guarding their mutagen, are they?"  Raph quipped.

 

"That's just it," Leo said, "I'm not entirely sure they are with the Kraang."

 

"How can they not be with the Kraang?" Raph was almost yelling.  "They were guarding a warehouse full of mutagen canisters!"

 

"I agree with Leo," Donnie said.  He held up one of the bullets that had bounced off of his shell, and into the top of it.  "They're weapons were so...." he paused, looking for the right word, "primitive.  These aren't even real bullets," he motioned to the object in his hand with his head.  "It's a bullet casing that's been cinched to form a point."

 

"We were pounding them into the concrete!" Raph was yelling now.  "And you," he turned back to Leo, "let them go because she called the bear her son!"

 

"We weren't pounding them into the concrete, that was the problem," Leo said.

 

"We almost had that bear taken care of," Raph argued, "and then we'd only have had the other two and their mom to take care of."

 

"It must be weird having disembodied arms for a mom," Michaelangelo said. 

 

Raph looked at him like he was crazy.  "They weren't disembodied arms, you moron!"

 

"They were attached to someone," Donnie put in.

 

"Did you see what they were attached to?" Mikey asked.  When no one answered, he said.  "So how do you know they weren't disembodied."

 

"With a disembodied voice, too?" Donnie asked.

 

"If the arms are disembodied, then the voice would be too," Mikey explained.

 

Donnie rolled his eyes, and looked at Master Splinter.  "All we saw were her arms," he said, "and they were human.  But that doesn't mean the rest of her was."

 

Master Splinter stroked his goat-tee thoughtfully as he listened to his sons' narration of their night.  "Hmmm," was all he said about it.

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

Arcos tried not to brood as he sketched out the woman in front of him in his notebook with a charcoal pencil.  She was long and sleek, a ferret mutant, and it was a good way for him to practice curves without having to rely on his sister.  Aries had gone off with Myra, of course, and Medusa was draped in what she was hoping was a sexy way as she spoke with Razz off in a corner.

 

"Oh, Arcos," his current model said, "I'm getting so bored."

 

"Alright then," the bear said gruffly, putting down his notebook.  "I can draw something else."  He flipped the page over to a blank one and began to sketch.

 

"That's not what I meant," she said in a pouty voice, sidling over to him.  "I was just saying."  She looked over at his notebook, and asked softly, "What are you drawing?"

 

"A turtle," Arcos replied.

 

"Wouldn't you rather draw me?"

 

He looked up from his pad into the ferret's face.  Arcos did not like playing these games.  He never had.  Many of the Grey Cats assumed that, because Aries reveled in this type of play, that he must too, and the opposite was true.  He'd tried the game, several times, and found it empty afterward.  He didn't like the feeling, of seeing a woman play at the same thing with someone else once his turn was over.  It had taken him a few years, but he now understood what his mother had been talking out when she gave them the birds and the bees talk all those years ago about 'emotional baggage.'

 

"I was drawing you," he said, "and you got bored."

 

She reached over to the corner of the page and gently tried to flip it back to the drawing of her.  "Finish it," she urged.

 

"After I finish this," he said, batting her hand away.

 

"Why are you drawing a turtle?" her sultry voice had vanished, it was now laced with annoyance.  "That's a boy turtle."

 

"Yes it is," Arcos said, pulling his pencil across the paper. 

 

"What are you drawing a boy for?" she asked in a huff.

 

"Because you are not the only thing I ever draw," he looked up from his sketchpad.  "Sometimes, I draw boys, sometimes I draw men, and sometimes," he gasped, and exaggeratedly looked both ways as if to make sure no one was listening, "I even draw my mother!"

 

The ferret made a disgusted "Gahh," and went off into the cargo bay, and Arcos chuckled.  Serves her right, he thought, conceited thing.

 

He flipped the page over and began to sketch Medusa and Razz.  Medusa was very good practice for curves, and for shading, with her long, sinuous body seeming to never end, and always in a different contortion.  Razz, who was not short by any standards, looked dwarfed under his sister when she stood at a full height, with the top two thirds of her body fully extended upward.  She rarely did that, however, unless she was threatening someone.  She usually twisted and turned so that she was face level with whomever she was speaking with, and it was no different today on the couch with Razz.

 

He drew them in fuzzy pulls, with soft eyes looking at them.  They talked together often, in a type of attention in each other and Arcos envied.  He was quite sure that 'nothing had happened' between them, there were no rumors crawling on the grapevine that they were anything but friends.  But maybe that is how it worked when you didn't play the game.  If it was, then he thought it was certainly something he envied.

 

He turned back to his sketch of the turtle he started, and closed his eyes, trying to bring back as many details as he could of any particular one of them.  The one that was the clearest was the blue masked one, standing over him with that curved blade, and him knowing that he was much too slow to be able to get out from under it.   He continued to draw what he could remember, beginning in another section of the paper, the turtle's arms raised above his head.

 

He had always admired Medusa's speed.  Aries had always been brute strength, with little thought going into it.  Do as much damage as you could, was his motto.  Arcos had always been secretly disappointed that his own task in a fighting team had been very similar.  He tried to use a little more strategy with his fighting, and Razz told him he did, but it did not change that he was large and very strong, and put in the front lines to clear the way for those who weren't so big and strong.

 

Medusa's speed, on the other hand, gave her many more options for a position in a fighting team.  She could go in and retrieve, she could stun, she could steal.  Her incredible strength could give her his job, batting assailants away like they were gnats. Her speed, however, was her greatest asset, she could strike so that the she couldn't be seen clearly, she was only a green blur.

 

But these turtles, they were in a completely different league.  He could barely see them moving at all, and when he had successfully hit one or parried a blow, he felt it was pure luck. He had to use all of his concentration to fight the two who were on him, he couldn't keep tabs on his mother, he couldn't keep tabs on his siblings.

 

And then his mother was the one who saved them.  She was supposed to be back up support, trying to pick off people to make it easier for he and Aries to stomp their way through the melee.  They were supposed to save her if someone got too close, not the other way around.

 

"What's the matter, big brother?"  Arcos caught a glimpse of silver next to him before hearing Crevan speak.  "You're looking broody."

 

"I am broody," he answered.  "I'm just thinking."

 

"All of you seem broody," Crevan noted.  "Did you have a fight or something?"

 

"Nah," Arcos shook his head.  "Just thinking."

 

"The superhero business isn't going so well?"

 

"It's going fine," Arcos smiled at the fox, then turned back to his sketch pad.  "It just requires some...thinking."

 

"You ought to take me out with you sometime," Crevan suggested.  "It must be fun playing superhero."

 

"You?"  Arcos looked up from the pad.  "You're the one committing the crimes!"

 

"I would know best how to fight other criminals then, wouldn't I?" Crevan nodded sagely.

 

Arcos shook his head, "You're crazy."

 

"Aries go off somewhere private with Myra?"

 

"Yeah," Arcos pulled the pencil in an arch to make a shell. 

 

"You know," Crevan's voice was confidential.  "There are more than a few women that would gladly go somewhere private with you."  After a pause he added, "And a few men."

 

Arcos gave him a sidelong glance.  "If I was in the mood," he muttered.  "I'm not in the mood."

 

"You're too picky," Crevan leaned back on his hands.

 

"You're one to talk," Arcos replied, "Mr. I-have-lost-my-true-love-and-want-no-one-else."

 

Crevan smiled at the poke,  "I have lost my true love, and I don't want anyone else."  He wiggled his eyebrows, "That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy what is offered to me.  It only means I haven't found anyone I want to be my woman."

 

"A woman's not an object, you know, "Arcos said peevishly.  "They're people."  After a pause he said, "My sister was a person."

 

"I know that," Crevan sat back up and looked at Arcos concerned.  "All this black cloud isn't about Ailurosa, is it?"

 

Arcos sighed.  "No," he said.  "It isn't."

 

Crevan looked at the sketch pad.  "Why are you drawing turtles?"

 

"For practice," Arcos told him.  He flipped back to his drawing of Medusa and Razz and started on it again.

 

***

"I need to work on my striking speed," Medusa said, her eyes locked on Razz's.

 

"No, you don't," he replied.  "You're one of the fastest people I know."

 

"I need to be faster," her voice was almost desperate.  "I'm not fast enough."

 

"Why do you need to be faster?" he asked gently.  He wanted to stroke her cheek, or her shoulder, or at the very least take her hand, but he didn't dare.  He had seen The Phoenix's temper in action, and had no desire to be on the receiving end of it.  And, he liked Medusa.  He really liked Medusa.  He wanted...he wanted her treated right.  When she looked at him, she looked at just him, like her mother.  But unlike her mother, who did it with everyone, Medusa only did it with him, and it made his heart skip a beat.  How had the lanky kid he'd met all those years ago turned into this?

 

She looked away from him, concern on her face.  "I just do."

 

***

 

Aries rolled over, his breathing labored, sweat matting his wool. 

 

Myra, a caramel colored dog mutant with perky ears and large, dark brown eyes, reached over and stroked his chest as he rolled off of her.  "I miss you when you're gone," she said, catching her own breath.  "You need to come and visit more often."

 

He turned his head toward her and smiled, reaching over and stroking her cheek.  "I'm busy, fighting."

 

"The Children of the Phoenix strike again," Myra's tone was not kind.

 

"Yep," Aries seemed not to catch it.  He kissed her, his hands trailing her body in a knowing manner, making her groan.  His thoughts were trying to intrude, thoughts of turtles, and ninjas, and throwing stars, and feeling helpless, for the first time, against an opponent.  He only knew of one way to turn off his thoughts, the reason he had sought Myra out in the first place.  He rolled her on top of him, and with a cheeky smile said, "Round two."

 

***

 

Chategris leaned forward, "Ma cherie," he purred.  "You have something on your mind."  They were alone in the upper game room, sitting on the leather couch next to each other.  The Phoenix opened her mouth to say, "Yes, the other day we had this encounter with these turtles who almost beat us into the ground..." but before she could say anything, he said.  "Tell me what I can do to take it off of your mind."

 

The difference in what he said and what she was going to answer his initial comment with made her heart wrench.  "You can be my friend," she said. 

 

"I am your friend, ma cherie," he said amused.  "Am I not?"

 

She regarded him, and her feelings hurt.  Chategris did not know how to be someone's friend, it occurred to her.  He couldn't think of someone else's needs before his own, could barely think of someone else's desires before his own.  A friend to him was an object to be wanted, to be had, someone who gave you something. She wanted a friend like she had in college, with her gymnastics team, where they knew all about her, and cared for her anyway.  She wanted a friend like Stephane, where she could go for comfort and love and support.  But, she remembered, when she and her teammates had all won their NCAA medals, when they graduated university and were forced into a job market not of their own making, because all of them were too old to continue with gymnastics, they had all drifted apart.  None of them had kept in touch with her for much more than two years, were they her friends?  Stephane had released her memory in three months, only three months and she was dead to him.  Wasn't your husband supposed to be your best friend?  Did your best friend leave you for dead after only three months?  Did _she_ know how to be someone's friend?  Was she anyone's friend?

 

Despite this race of thoughts in her head, she answered him, "Yes, you are."

 

"You worry too much, ma cherie," he said, taking her hand in his paw.  "You need to enjoy today, it is all you may have."

 

"Today is all any of us might have," Phoenix said in a distance voice.

 

"Oui," he answered.  "So you should take advantage of it." 

 

She smiled at him, but it was still a distant smile.  "I am," she said.  "I am here."

 

The answer seemed to surprise him, "You are," he wrapped an arm around her and drew her close to him.  "With me."

 

She didn't stop him.  There was a part of her that just seemed to watch what was going on, and then another part that was lonely, and all that part wanted was for the vague, unidentified loneliness to go away. 

 

His fur was soft as he wrapped her in his arms, bringing his face to her neck.  "I will make all your worries vanish, ma Phenix," he whispered.  "I have wanted to make all of your worries vanish..." his voice trailed off as his lips trailed her neck, down to her collarbone.  His paw made its way under her t-shirt, the palm of his hand almost large enough to encompass the entire side of her torso.

 

The Phoenix felt slightly removed from what was happening in her body.  His lips on her skin, his hand cupping her breast did not garner any physical reaction from her whatsoever.  Emotionally, it only made the great dark blob that was her loneliness seem even darker.

 

"Tell me what you want..." he purred.

 

The question set off a sparkler of memories; of staying up until all hours of the morning with her teammates or other teams of girls, giggling, and dancing, and playing truth or dare, and showing off to each other; of meeting Stephane, a fellow tutor in the French Lab where she had gotten a work study; of her writing groups, and being published, and being told by more than one journal that her work was welcome at any time; of being told how beautiful her and Stephane's children were, that their mix of ethnicity made them even more beautiful than either of their beautiful parents; of her children now, sitting at the television and discussing the news, of she reading to them and they asking questions and she not knowing the answer, of them finding the answer together, and then they using the answer at some later time when she least expected it; of the lines of glowing without glowing that emanated from her when she was in a deep meditation, that she knew were each attached to another person, even though she didn't know who and had not tried to find out for a long time. 

 

She knew what she wanted.

 

"You can't give me what I want," she said, pushing away from him slightly.

 

He looked at her as if she were crazy, it was only then that it occurred to her in what context he was asking the question.  "You want a woman?" he said, looking more confused than she had ever seen him before, "I can provide that."

 

"No," her voice was laced with annoyance.  "I don't want this," she said, pushing Chategris' hand down from her breast with one hand, and pushing away from with the other.   She took a deep breath, and in a calmer voice said, "I am sorry, Chategris.  I shouldn't have let you do that..."

 

He reached out for her, and she stood up from the couch.  "Why not?" he asked, he looked genuinely hurt.  "Why won't you let me--"

 

She cut him off, "Because, this isn't what I want."  There was a moment's silence as they looked at each other.  "I am sorry, Chategris," she said again, in a pleading voice.  "I shouldn't have let you do that...I shouldn't have come up here with you."  She turned to the door to leave.

 

"I cannot give you what you want if you do not tell me what it is," he stood up, his voice angry.

 

She turned back to him, and shook her head.  "You couldn't give it to me anyway, Chategris.  You're not capable of it."

 

The barb found it's way home, and she only slightly wished she hadn't thrown it his way.  "You want a knight in shining armor, ma cherie?" he asked mockingly.  "You want a father for your children?  You want more children?  You want your old life back, when you could walk in the sun of the city and not be considered an abomination?"

 

The anger brewing her faded with the throwing of her nasty words before, and again she shook her head.  "No, Chategris."  She turned, opening the door to the staircase.  "I'm sorry," she said again.

 

I want an equal.

 


	19. Chapter 19

A/N: It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT 2012, those whose stories will never be told. I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like. 

~~

"I've been thinking about our crime fighting," Phoenix said, while serving up eggs for breakfast. Along with everyone's favorite preparation of egg, she gave Medusa five rare, intact eggs as a treat. She popped the little pigeon eggs into her mouth one by one and swallowed them whole before working on her cooked eggs. "We need some rules, " Phoenix said.

"What do you mean we need rules?" Aries asked with a mouth full of egg.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Phoenix said, setting down to her plate.

He swallowed, "Why do we need rules?" he asked with an upper class London accent.

"Because, we need to know what to expect from each of us."

"I thought we were getting along rather nicely," Medusa said. "We seem to have come up with a rhythm."

Phoenix had thought so too, until their last fight. "I need to have you three make some promises." She looked at each in turn, and each of them nodded.

"Always look out for each other," she started.

"Why wouldn't we do that?" Arcos asked. 

"I don't know, I am just stating it," she said. 

The three of them nodded again.

"And you will always obey me," she continued. "Whether you like what I tell you while were fighting or not."

This didn't sit well with her children. Their faces contorted with peevishness. 

"You're not the best strategist among us," Arcos argued.

"But I'm in the back, and I can see more than everyone else," she said. "As Medusa said, we have a nice rhythm going. But, in the end, I'm the Mama."

He harumphed. But they all nodded.

"If it puts you in more danger than you are already in, I do not want you to come and help me."

All three of them began talking at once.

"What are you talking about?"

"That's our job, to help take care of you!"

"There is no way we're not going come help you!"

She held up her hand. "You promise, or we stop doing this altogether," her voice was firm.

They looked at each other, conflict fighting on each of their faces. Arcos nodded slowly, and the other two followed suit.

"If you are going to help someone, and have to choose between me or your brothers and sister, you will choose your brothers and sister."

"Why are you doing this, Mama?" Arcos asked.

Phoenix shook her head. "Promise."

Again, three heads nodded.

"If you--" she started.

"How many are there?!" Aries interrupted.

She gave him a hard look, "This is the last one," she told him. "If you have to come back and get me," she took a deep breath, "you won't."

"No," Medusa said, quickly. "No, I won't promise that."

"Me, either," the boys said in unison.

"Then we stop this going about the city, and stay here, or go to the cargo bay, like we did before." Her voice was final.

"How are you going to stop us, Mama?" Aries said angrily. "If you're not with us, we don't have to keep any of your promises."

"I will prevent you from going in any way I can," her voice deepened slightly and became forceful with her words, the true 'mother voice'. "I will put salt in the cars gas tanks. I will destroy your battery rechargers. I will bite the hoses in the car to disable it if I have to!" She felt her face getting hot. "I will tell Chategris to stop you whenever he sees you."

The three of them looked at her, concerned.

"Promise."

Arcos sighed. "I promise."

Aries and Medusa looked at him, and then they too muttered, "I promise."

"Why are you doing this, Mama?" Arcos asked again.

"We...this isn't a game," she said. "It was luck that those turtles didn't pound us into the floor of that warehouse in five minutes."

Her three children did say anything.

"If we're going to be trying to help those scientists, and anyone else the Kraang have kidnapped, the probability of us encountering them again is not zero. I seriously doubt they were there to protect the mutagen."

"What?" Aries asked.

"That's what I thought, too," Arcos said at the same time. "They were to stop us. Somehow, the Kraang knew we were going to be there, and sent them in to stop us."

"That means that we did some damage to them when we got in the T.C.R.I building!" Medusa tried to shed a positive light on the matter.

"It means," Phoenix tried to be gentle, "that they want The Children of the Phoenix dead." Again, the three of them were silent, looking at her gravely. "If that one in the blue mask hadn't let you go, the Kraang would have succeeded."

"But why did he let us go?" Aries asked. "They could have creamed us."

"But we would have creamed that orange one," Medusa said. 

"And they probably know we'll meet up again at some point. They can try again," Arcos explained.

Phoenix took another deep breath. They had avoided talking about the encounter, each one processing it in his or her own way, hoping, maybe, it wasn't as close a call as they imagined, hoping that the game they'd been playing would turn back into a game. "The Children of the Phoenix are The Children of the Phoenix," she said. "Not the Children of the Phoenix and Their Mother." She looked at each one of them lovingly, and felt her heart swell with adoration for each of her magnificent children, each a fantastic creation of the universe wanting to know itself. "I am well aware that I am the weak link in this entire operation," she went on. "You have to promise me you are The Children of the Phoenix."

"We need a new name," Aries said, "that one is super corny."

"You can be The Children of the Phoenix without The Phoenix herself," she explained. "You can't be it if there aren't any children. So the children come first. That's the way it is supposed to be, and the way it will be."

"Yes, Mama," each of three of them said, poking at their eggs.

The silence in the room became uncomfortable, for it was almost never silent when more than one person was home. A scritching began behind the wall, and grew in intensity. They all looked at each other confused, their conversation forgotten.

"What's that?" Aries asked.

Medusa's tongue was flicking in and out and a fast rate. "Rats," she said. "Lots of them."

The scritching slowly became louder and louder, until it was a din of white noise filling the warehouse. They ran down the stairs, only to be met by a carpet of rats going down them also.

"What the--?"

"Where are all these rats going?"

"Where did they all come from?"

"Is the Pied Piper of Hamlin out there or something?"

They descended the stairs, rats swarming around them, ignoring them, heading outside. When they exited the warehouse, they saw the road was also a carpet of rodents, rats in every color and size, all running for their storm drain.

"Why are they all running to the sewers?" Aries asked.

Medusa struck out with her skinny little arms, and nabbed one of the passing rats with no effort. She then opened her mouth, unhinged her jaws, and holding it by the tail, dropped it in her mouth."

"Oh, Medusa!" the Phoenix said exasperated.

"There isn't any reason to let them go to waste," Medusa said.

"Why are they all running into the storm drain?" Aries repeated his question.

"Maybe the Pied Piper is playing in the sewers, wooly-brains," Arcos cuffed him on the horn. "How do we know?"

"We need to find out," he said.

Phoenix raised her eyebrows. "You want us to follow thousands of rats down the drain?" Rats did not bother her, after all, she lived in abandoned warehouse with who knows how many of them. But this many in one place, all headed in the same direction, indeed like out of a fairy tale, was skeevy. "And do what?" she continued. "See how many Medusa can eat before she explodes?"

Medusa had just closed her mouth over another of the rodents.

"Medusa!" 

"What?"

"Stop that!"

"They're good!"

"They might have the bubonic plague or something," Phoenix admonished.

"They don't have the bubonic plague, Mama," Medusa rolled her eyes.

"Seriously," Aries interrupted. "We're just going to stand out here and watch all these things go into the sewer system?"

"They might clog it up," Arcos said slowly.

Phoenix looked at him like he had crabs crawling out of his fuzzy ears perched on top of his head.

He shrugged, "I'm trying to be helpful in coming to a decision."

"A decision for what?" Phoenix side stepped a line of rats that did not seem as if they were going to around her, but rather through her.

"To find out what's happening."

"I don't know if there is any room for us in down there," Aries began to look doubtful. "They're still coming."

"I'm going back upstairs," Phoenix announced. "They look like they're starting to get annoyed that in their way."

Her three followed her back up to their warehouse floor, and watched from the garden window as more, and more, and more rats came down the street, and then disappeared in the storm drain.

"This is starting to get freaky," Aries muttered.

"It's like a train wreck," Medusa said, "you can't look away."

"It's got to be all clogged up down there," Arcos surmised, "maybe we shouldn't flush the toilet for a while."

"I'm with Arcos," Phoenix said. "If you need to pee, pee on the compost pile."

"I'm not going out there to pee!" Aries looked away from the rats. "That exposes way too much, to critters that have sharp teeth."

"Then don't pee," Phoenix said unsympathetically.

"We should go see what's going on, Mama," Medusa said. "If we're heroes, we need to check it out."

"It's gotta be all clogged up down there," Arcos' voice sounded distant.

"We're not heroes," the Phoenix crossed her arms at her chest. "We play at heroes."

"That's not what everyone else says!" Aries' voice was offended.

"Who is everyone?" Phoenix finally dragged her eyes from the rats to her son. "The Grey Cats?"

Aries twisted his mouth. "Yeah."

"Their opinion counts for very little," Phoenix told him.

"I wonder if people's toilets are getting all nasty," Arcos mused. 

"Mama, this is weird stuff," Medusa motioned to the street. "We need to check it out."

Arcos shook his head, "I mean, with all those rats, there can't be anywhere for the sewage to go."

"Fine," the Phoenix went to her bookcase and got her medical bag. "We'll go down and check it out."

They had to go several streets over, all of which were covered with endless rats, to find a manhole cover to enter the sewer system. The storm drain was almost stuffed with rats trying to get in it, and any attempt to open the grate garnered a chattering that was much too ominous for any of them to keep their hands on it for long.

As soon as the manhole cover was opened, rats began pouring in through it, so that they had to scramble down as quickly as they could to keep from having the rodents crawl all over them. Medusa went in first, picking up a rat on her way down and dropping into her mouth when she got on the ground. The floor was full of rats also, coming down the hole and the sewer pipe, but when Medusa hit the ground, they moved around her, parting like a wave.

The others came down after her, and Phoenix lead the way going in the same direction as the rats. "Oww!" she felt a sharp pain in her leg, then another, then her feet. "They're biting me!" She shook her leg, and backed up. When she got closer to Medusa, the rats jumped off of her and joined the sea of other rats again.

"They don't like Medusa," Aries said.

"Good observation, Sherlock," Arcos muttered.

"I like them," Medusa simply reached out and grabbed one by the tail, held it over her head, and dropped it slowly into her mouth.

"Medusa!" Phoenix said disgustedly. "You don't know where that rat's been?"

"Yes I do, it's been in the sewer."

"You're going to get E. coli!" 

"Look, there is an end to the rats!" Arcos pointed down the opposite end of the pipe, where the line of rats stopped abruptly.

It passed them, Medusa grabbed another one. 

"Put it down!" Phoenix's voice was not to be refused.

Medusa muttered "nnnnh" and put the rat down. It ran after the others.

"Come on," Phoenix lead the way again, "let's get this over with."

The sewer was eerily quiet, the echo of the rats paws on the ground fading away in the distance. Soon, all they heard was the dripping of water, both near and far away.

"It stinks down here," Aries said.

"It's the sewer, Aries," Phoenix replied, "what did you expect it to smell like?"

"Roses," Arcos chuckled.

"Shut up," Aries made a swat at his brother.

"Language," Phoenix warned. 

Aries pouted.

"I smell rats, Mama," Medusa said. "But not as many as before."

They rounded a corner, and it opened up into an exposed area where several tunnels converged. In a shadowed area near one at the far end, lay a figure outstretched on the floor, surrounded by rats. They approached him slowly. He didn't move.

"Is he dead?" Arcos asked.

"He looks like Freddie Krueger," Aries observed, as they crept closer. He was tall and lanky, wearing a black trench coat and bandages around parts of his body. He was horribly disfigured, his skin puckered and pocked from what looked like burns. 

"He isn't dead," Phoenix said, softening her eyes and seeing the not-glow about him. She had never seen anything like it before. There was a smudge on his chest, just at his sternum, indicating some sort of physical damage, but his head...Looking at it made her own head swim. There was a black cloud like substance swimming in the not-glow, moving about his skull like a wave, in and out, in and out. She bent down and reach out to touch him, and the rats converged on his body.

"Medusa," she whispered, and her snake daughter was by her side in an instant. The rats ran off, chattering angrily. She reached out again, and heard don't in her mind. She stopped with her hand hovering above him.

Why?

Don't.

Shouldn't we help him? We've come all this way.

Don't, the unbidden thought said.

"Mama," Medusa said softly, her tongue flicking in and out. "He smells putrid."

"Come on," Phoenix stood up, feeling uneasy and guilty. "Let's go."

"Are we just going to leave him?" Arcos asked.

"Yes," Phoenix answered. He looked at her surprised. 

Before she could answer, Medusa said, "He smells like there is something wrong with him. I say we leave him." 

So, they went home, and spent their evening listening to the Phoenix read to them from The Olive Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, which they'd found on a book shopping trip. Each went to bed in their own spaces, but Phoenix couldn't fall asleep. She tossed and turned, and the guilt kept growing. She got up, sat on her floor, and began to meditate.

Why couldn't I help that man? she asked.

Her mind was silent.

Was he brain damaged, is that what that black was?

Again, she got no answer. 

She had never been told not to heal someone, it didn't seem right. He was absolutely hideous, he was the most hideous thing she'd ever seen, but did he not deserve help? Wasn't everyone deserving of help? Guilt niggled at her again. What if he was a mutant, and had no one to help him? What if he did have brain damage, or the damage at his sternum was very bad?

Heal your head, the unbidden thought said. Heal your heart. Then heal others, and others besides.

So what was hurt with her head? Nothing that she could figure.

What was hurt with her heart? She felt guilty. How does one fix feeling guilty? You go and do what you feel guilty about, or you confess what you did wrong. She hadn't done anything wrong, and she felt guilty for not having helped the man, despite what her voice yet not her voice told her.

She got up from the floor, and went to get her messenger bag. Donning it, she crept down the stairs and to the manhole cover a few streets over.

She had no idea that manhole covers were so heavy. Her arms were burning by the time she managed to move the thing over enough to allow her to fit down. She put a flashlight in her mouth, and descended into the darkness. 

The flash light gave her plenty of light, it bounced off the concrete walls to illuminate the tunnel, causing lots of shadows, like a mirror in a mirror. She followed the tunnel until it came to the open room again, where there were electric lights dimly shining. She turned her flashlight off, and approached the still prone figure in the corner.

He hadn't moved since earlier in the day, and he was still surrounded by rats, although nowhere near as many. There was a large brimmed, black sun hat beside him that she hadn't noticed before. He looked like a corpse in the dim light, dressed in black and lying on his back as if he'd been lain out. She crouched down next to him and sat on her knees. The rats chattered at her.

"I'm here to help him," she said gently.

The rats didn't seem to care.

When she reached out to touch the man, one of rats made a motion to bite her. She grabbed it and threw it away from her, "Little blighters," she muttered. Another manged to get her hand, cutting a deep gouge in it. She threw it against the concrete next to her. It squeaked and ran off. The other rats got the picture, and backed away from her, still chattering angrily, but leaving her alone.

She looked down at man, and didn't know where to start. He still had the large smudge at his chest, and his head still swam with the black mist. She took some of her medicines out of her bag and placed them next to her. None of the places where he was bandaged seem to be injured, so she took the edge of his trench coat and opened it.

Don't, the voice told her.

The man's hand reached up and grabbed her wrist.

She gasped and tried to jerk it back, but he held it fast. He opened his eyes, and her own grew wide with horror as she looked into them. They were great, round pink orbs, with a dark pink in the center as his pupil. They were set deep into his head, surrounded by dark circles of puckered skin.

"You dare touch me," he said with malevolence.

"I'm here to help you," her voice made no noise, it was only breath coming past her teeth.

"Help me?" his voice was smooth and refined, so unlike his looks. He squeezed her wrist so that it hurt. She jerked again, but he did not release his grasp. "You are vermin."

"I came down here to help you," she managed to get her voice to work, but it was breathy. "You're hurt."

"You are a parasite," he seethed, "You cannot help me . Your kind does nothing but take. There is nothing you, pitiable thing, can do for me."

"Your chest is hurt," panic began to rise up her spine. She pointed with her free hand, "I can help that."

The rats swarmed back to him. A white one climbed to his shoulder and stared at her with beady eyes. The black mist around his head swam in and out of his skull, making his face cloud over in both her normal vision, and her softened eyes. His horrible pink eyes floated in his head. "Who are you to think you can help me?"

"I am called the Phoenix," it took all of her willpower not to stutter. "I am a healer. You are hurt in your chest and your head. I can help that."

The man laughed, throwing his head back to give her a clear view of long, skeletal teeth. She could feel his breath against her hand where he had a grip on her. "My head is not hurt," he said, his voice maniacal. "And my chest will heal without you, leech!" 

She understood what the black cloudiness around his head was. It wasn't brain damage. This man was deranged. She tried to jerk her hand away again, but it did no good.

"But you," he leaned into her, his great pink eyes looking at her intently. He stood up, pulling her with him. He was tall, so that her hand was above her head with his grip on her wrist. "You will be an example to humanity. You are a pest to be eradicated by my hand."

The panic erupted from the top of her head and speared down the tips of her toes. "No!" She pulled her body away from him, like a child, yanking on her arm to break free.

He laughed at her, mocking her in her helplessness.

Your chest is hurt, her own words came back to her. She took a step toward him, taking him off guard with the change of momentum. With all the force she could muster, she punched him in the sternum, right in the center of the smudge in his not-glow at his chest.

He let out his breath in a huff, and let go of her wrist as he doubled over. She turned, leaving what she'd taken out of her bag, and ran. She didn't turn on the flashlight, so that when she entered the tunnel, it was pitch black around her. She thunked into a wall, her forehead hitting the concrete. She didn't stop, she simply followed the wall, still running, until she saw light shining from the open manhole cover.

She ran up the stairs when she got the warehouse, making enough noise that the three of her children were awake and at the door to the top floor when she arrived. 

Arcos looked at the goose egg forming on her forehead, and said, "What have you been doing?"

"Being stupid," her voice was shaking, "stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"You went back in the sewer to that man," Medusa's hissed. "I can smell him!"

"He was hurt," Phoenix shook her head.

"A rat bit your hand," Aries noted.

"I can take care of rats," Medusa spit out the last word with disgust, and she darted out the garden window.

"Medusa!" Phoenix called. She heard the scrape of the storm drain grate being pried open. "Medusa!"

"She'll be fine, Mama," Arcos said. "She can take care of herself."

"That man was strong," Phoenix took her messenger bag off.

"So is Medusa," Aries said. "You need to deal with your hand. Rats carry disease, you know."

She had to chuckle at that. "Will you get me some wash, please? I don't have any in my bag."

He did as she asked. She rinsed off her hand, and the bites on her leg. She was about to put some salve on them when Arcos said, "Why don't you do your magic thing on yourself?"

She looked up at him. "I never thought about it." She considered it, looking back down at her wounds. Then, she placed her hand over her leg where she'd been bitten and began her healing with the tingly light.

She moved her hand, the bite was gone.

"Mama!" Aries brushed his hand over her leg where the bite had been. "Do that again!"

So she did, with each bite on her leg, and the one on her hand. 

"It is like magic!" Arcos exclaimed.

"Give me your knife," Aries held out his hand.

"You're not going to cut me?" Phoenix held the knife up, but didn't hand it over.

Aries snatched it from her, "No, I'm not going to cut you." He then slid the blade over his arm. Blood began to seep up into his cream wool. "Do me, now."

She laid her hands over his cut. After her conveyance of the tingly light, she moved it. The wool was matted with blood, and they couldn't get a good enough look on his arm to see if it was totally healed as hers had been.

"Here," Arcos picked up the knife, and grabbed Aries arm. 

"Hey!"

"Shut up, you big baby."

"Language...."

Arcos slid the knife gently over Aries arm, sheering off the wool to reveal the pink skin underneath. "Now do it," he handed the knife back to Aries, who cut himself again.

Phoenix put her hand over the cut, and did her 'magic'. When she moved her hand, the cut had stopped bleeding, the scab was partially healed, but still there. "Awww," she said disappointed. "I guess it only works on me."

"Is this any better than you usually do?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I haven't paid close attention right afterward, only the next time I check the wound."

"We need to start paying better attention, then," Aries suggested. "If you could do this to everyone, it would come in awfully handy."


	20. Chapter 20

A/N:  It occurred to me that there must be many off screen mutants in TMNT 2012, those whose stories will never be told.  I wanted to write something about some of them, and what their lives and cultures might be like.

 

~~~

 

Medusa darted through the sewers, her tongue flitting in and out of her mouth, following the scent of rat.  She reached the open area where they had found the corpse-like figure.  It was empty, save a few of her mother's jars and bottles that she must have left in a haste to get away.   Several tunnels exited the dimly lit space, and she had a difficult time figuring out which one the rats had gone down.

 

She picked a tunnel that she felt smelled the freshest, and slid down it.  She figured that the rats had been surrounding the man when they found him in the first place, that the scent of rat would lead her to him now.  She hoped she was right.

 

What had her mother been thinking?  Medusa knew that her mother was not as cautious as she should be, that she was as strong as she or her brothers, she was not able to defend herself the way they could, and it worried her.  Nothing had happened to her yet, only a few scrapes and rat bites, but when would her luck run out.  It had to be luck that kept her tiny, overly-compassionate mother alive.

 

There had been many of her patients that Medusa would have told her to leave for dead.  Better yet, let her finish them off.  She would finish this rat-lover of a thing off.  He had dared to hurt her mother and he would pay.

 

She slowed as the smell of rats became more potent, and she could begin to hear chattering.

 

"Yes, yes," she heard a smooth, articulate voice say.  "That will be perfect.  Let us go, now." 

 

Medusa could smell rats strongly, dozens of them, and the putrid stink of the man.  "You're not going anywhere," she said with a hiss, her voice echoed down the tunnel. 

 

Several rats came round a corner to see her, squeaking.  They hesitated as she approached, and then scattered as she struck at them and grabbed one by the middle.  It gave a rodent scream, and when Medusa rounded the corner, she saw the corpse standing amongst his rats like a king holding court.

 

He laughed, "You cannot stop me," he said calmly.  "My rats will decimate you."

 

Medusa held up the rat she'd caught above her head.  "Look closely."  She took the rat by the tail, and said, "This is what I am going to do to you."  She unhinged her jaw, and slowly lowered the rat into her mouth, keeping her black eyes on now blindfolded figure.  She sucked the tail in like a noodle, and then closed her mouth, smiling.

 

The man twisted his mouth, his lips curling, if they could curl any more.  "No!" he cried.  "No!"  Then he pointed at her, "Get her!  Avenge your brother!"

 

The guy needs a speech writer, Medusa thought, as a swarm of rats converged on her.  She easily batted them away with her tail, with parts of her body as she undulated.  She struck at them, sometimes hitting more than one at a time with her mouth, and spitting them out, or throwing them from her with a jerk of her head.  She made her way deliberately to the man, keeping her black eyes on him even as she batted rats away.  Several bit her, and she ignored the sharp pains before the rats went flying.

 

Several of them hesitated, or would not come near her at all.  She laughed and hissed gently.  "I don't see any decimation going on," she said.  "You are going to pay for what you did to my mother."  She darted toward him, a green lightening streak in the dim, but he moved before she got to him.  "You can't escape," she taunted.  "I can smell you where ever you go."

 

She couldn't see him, but she could smell his putrid odor farther down the tunnel.  She continued to bat off rats, ignoring their biting, "I will eat every single one of these rodents," she grabbed one and dropped it in her mouth quickly, "and I will enjoy every morsel."

 

With the last of her words, and entire wall of rats came forth from the tunnel, moving over her like a wave.  They were everywhere, she could smell nothing but rats, feel nothing but rats crawling all over her body.  Even when she whipped them off of her, for the brief moments that the smell of the sewer got through the smell of rats, the putrid stink of the rat-lover was gone. 

 

She roiled and slunk, and struck and darted, until the rats receaded, leaving piles of their dead about   her.   She left to go back home, and by the time she got there, all the little bites on her body had begun to sting.

 

"Oh, Curly Que!"  her mother ran to her.  "You're bleeding all over."

 

"They're just little bites," she said, "but they sting."

 

"We need to get you cleaned up," she went to her bookshelf to get bottles of antiseptic wash.

 

"Did you get him?" Aries asked quietly.

 

"No," she said.  "But I think I scared him."  She chuckled, "He's got a whole lot less rats than he used to."  Aries put his hand up, and she slapped it.  "What happened to your arm?"

 

"We'll explain later," Arcos said.  "You need to get patched up."

 

Phoenix put her in the shower and poured wash over her, making Medusa take her shirt off to wash her torso also.  Getting a clean shirt, and coming out of the bathroom, Phoenix took out a jar of salve.

 

"No, Mama," Aries said, "do the magic first."

 

Phoenix put her hand over each of the bites, sending the golden not-light into each wound.  When she moved her hand, the bites were closed, and new skin had formed, pink and raw where the scales had been bitten away.

 

"When did you start doing this?"  Medusa asked.  "They're almost healed!"

 

"Just tonight!" her mother smiled proudly.  When she'd gotten each one, she then put some salve on it and bandaged Medusa up.  "All better."

 

"That's what we were doing with my arm," Aries said, thrusting it out.  "Seeing how well she could heal the cuts.  She healed all of her own completely!"

 

Phoenix but her leg out and turned it to show it off.  "Nothing there!"

 

"Wow," Medusa shook her head.  "That will certainly come in handy."

 

"That's what I said," Aries winked.

 

***

 

For the first time since meeting Chategris, the Phoenix sent him a peace offering.   She still felt guilty about what happened the last time she was there, and could think of now other way to make it up to him.    She didn't want him, not like that, she hadn't wanted like that in a long, long time.  Now she was getting old, and she doubted that she'd want like that ever again.  48 years old, and I'm out of commission.  She wondered if this happened to people who weren't celibate, or if the fire went out of the furnace as snow gathered on the mountain.

 

She made him a small bag of sedative herbs, that when smoked would produce a light high.  It wasn't cannabis, but it was closest she could come up with.  She didn't even know where she'd get pot if she had the money to buy it to give to him, so this would have to do.  She wrote a note with it, "Chere Chategris," she started it and ended it with, "ton amie, Phenix."  Then sent it off with her children, in hopes of it being enough to smooth their fight over.

 

When the kids came home, Arcos said, "Chategris asked what that stuff was you gave him, and where he could get some more."

 

***

 

The next day they all went over the cargo bay, Phoenix bouncing with excitement.  Medusa told the story of her fight with great glee, and Phoenix glossed over her encounter quickly to say she wanted to see anyone who had any cut at all.   "I want to practice!"

 

She sat outside, the cool breeze signaling the end of autumn moving the few strands of her hair that had fallen out of her hair sticks.  A row of people came to her, with hangnails, scrapes, bruises, she asked for anything.  She laid her hands on each one, her eyes soft to see the not-glow around everything, and

healed them as best she could.  To some, nothing happened.  To some, they healed as well as Medusa's had, leaving only the pink of new skin growing.  To most, the results were somewhere in between.  None of them healed the way she had done her own wounds.

 

It reminded her of that night, all those years ago, when she had first had her eyes opened and seen the glow that didn't glow around everything.  It was stronger, illuminating brighter and farther into the air,  around living things, she'd noticed during the years.  Certain living things were even stronger, especially certain people, and she had not determined what caused that to happen.  Each and every mutant who came to her was beautiful, she thought, their wounds were beautiful, their eyes were beautiful.  Their old clothes, used and scavenged, were beautiful.  Their voices, when the few of them said thank you, brought tears to her eyes.  The old ugly cargo bay glowed with life, precious life that lived here, and loved here, and she was a part of it.  Her glow that wasn't a glow went into each person who came to her, she could see tendrils of it hanging on to her patients as she drew her hands away.

 

"Ma cherie," Chategris' voice, a gorgeous purring, worried sound, was close to her ear.  "You need to stop and rest."  His French was wonderful with his Haitian accent to her ears.

 

She turned to him, smiling softly, blinking slowly and took a deep breath.  He glowed like everything else, full of vitality and life.  "I am fine," she said quietly.  "I want to do this."

 

"You look like you are about to fall asleep," he said.  "Or that you have taken some sort of drug.  You didn't smoke any of that stuff you sent me yesterday before coming here, did you?"

 

"No," she turned back to her patient, holding his calf as she healed a scratch.  "I'm working."

 

"Go," Chategris said in English, shooing the rest of the people around them away with his paw.  "Let her rest."

 

"I don't need to rest, Chategris," she told him, "I am fine."  She looked up at the sky, the sun was setting and the sky was turning purple.  She was taken aback by how lovely it looked, the buildings letting off a soft, dim glow, birds flying by small dots of not-light skidding across the exquisite sky.

 

"Are you sure you are alright?" Chategris gently put her chin in his paw and moved her head to look at him.  "You do not look alright."

 

She smiled, and gestured to the sky.  "Isn't it beautiful?  Can't you see how glorious it is?"

 

"It is the sky, ma cherie," he said, "as it always is."

 

"Yes," she breathed, and turned to look up again.

 

***

 

"Mama, Razz said it looked like I have polka dots."

 

"It does look like you have polka dots, Curly Que," she answered.  The euphoria of her visit to the cargo bay had worn off, and the world was normal once again, with only the knowing left that it was filled with light and life.  After a short pause, she asked, "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

 

Medusa looked at her, confused.  "No..." she said slowly.

 

"You know you can tell me anything," Phoenix told her.  "You do know that, right?"

 

"Of course I know that," Medusa answered.  "I just don't have anything to tell right now."

 

"Alright," Phoenix said slowly.  "But if you ever have anything, you can tell me."  She kissed her daughter between her black eyes, and stroked her head.

 

"I know that," Medusa smiled, and reached up to stroke her mother's hair in return.

 

Of all of her children, Medusa was the only one who hadn't come to her to report a first, or any, romantic episode.  Aries had approached her when he was 14, shortly after she met the man at the Asian store who was not really there, to tell her, "Mama, a girl kissed me today."

 

She had to turn away to keep him from seeing her smile.  She'd actually be expecting something like this quite a lot earlier with Aries.  A fiery temper often mean other fiery parts as well.  She was surprised that it was a girl who kissed him, and not the other way around.  "She did, eh?"

 

"Yeah," he said.

 

"Did you kiss her back?"

 

"Yes!"  She didn't dare turn around, but she could hear from his voice he must have been looking at her like she was crazy.

 

"Alright," she got a handle on her smile, and made her face look serious before she turned around.  "Did you want her to kiss you?"

 

Aries looked away, embarrassed, "Yes," he said slowly.

 

"Then it's a good thing, right?"  What in the world were you supposed to say when you son just comes in announces a girl kissed him?

 

"What if she does that with everybody?" he had asked.  "Or more, with everybody."

 

Oh dear.  She no longer had force her face to look serious. 

 

She had leaned over and took his large hands in hers.  Even at this age, she hadn't been able to wrap her fingers about his hand any longer, it was too broad.  "There are two ways to look at that."  She looked down at his hands to give herself time to think before looking back up at him.  "Other people will say that because they are jealous that the girl won't be with them, and they like her.  Or, she may very well do that, and more, with everybody." 

 

"Oh," he looked down at the table, disappointment on his face.

 

It had broken her heart.  "But that doesn't mean you can't be nice to her," Phoenix had told her.  "And treat her like a lady, and not like a lot of the boys at the cargo bay do."  She took a deep breath.  Her mind screamed out, "Run, boy, run away, fast!"  But instead, she said, "I would suggest you not go anywhere alone with her, though."

 

It had only taken her about three weeks to figure out he had not taken her advice.  The rages that he frequently had became considerably less, and the time he spent with his siblings when he went to the cargo bay did also.

 

Arcos had asked her, a few months later,  "How do you know if a girl likes you?"

 

Phoenix turned off the television, and faced Arcos sitting next to her.  She looked up at him, "She wants to be around you a lot," she had said.

 

"Uh-huh?"

 

"She laughs a lot when she is around you, usually.  Or at least giggles."

 

"Uh-huh?"  His ears had bounced up and down as he nodded his head.

 

Phoenix thought, "She usually tries to be close to you, physically."

 

"You mean like sit next to you and stuff?"

 

He sounded so young to her asking these questions, "Yes," she had smiled sweetly at the question. 

 

"How do you know when to kiss her?"

 

Phoenix had chewed her lip.   "You can usually tell that someone wants to kiss you, because they look back and forth from your eyes to your lips."

 

"Uh-huh."

 

"And she usually gives you some sort of...." she waved her hands in the air vaguely, "feeling."

 

"OK"

 

She looked up at him, and was about to turn the evening news back on, when he said, "Mama, how do you kiss a girl?"

 

"Uhhhh...." she blinked quickly to regain her wits.  "You've seen people kissing before.  Like that."

 

"But _how_ do you do it?"

 

"I can't help you with that, Honey Bear," she had told him.  "You have to figure that out for yourself."

 

She never did find out if he kissed the girl he was asking about, but enough girls got kissed to know he'd figured it out.

 

***

 

"Take a look at what we've found," Aries put the laptop on the kitchen table and turned it to Phoenix.  "Remember that warehouse where we met up with those turtles?"

 

"How in the world could I forget?" she asked.

 

"People have been seeing not only those business men going in and out of that warehouse," Arcos said.  "But they've been seeing robots going in and out of it!"

 

Aries played a 12 second long video that showed a robot-riding brain walking from the back of a semi-truck into the warehouse entrance.  "Not only that, but look at this," he played another clip.  It was grainy, and hard to make out, but it looked that just within the shadows of the warehouse entrance, there was a trap door held open by one of the black suited business men.  "They've got a secret hideout!"

 

"How do we know there aren't killer turtles in the hideout?" Medusa asked acidly.

 

"We don't," Arcos said.  "But, I'll wager they won't be there."

 

"You will, huh?" Phoenix raised her eyebrows.  "And why is that?"

 

"Why would the Kraang keep killer ninja turtles in a hideout?"

 

"I have no idea..." Phoenix replied.

 

"They wouldn't," Arcos continued.  "My bet is those turtles are off doing more important things than guarding a warehouse, when one of those robots could do it, especially inside."

 

"We think we just had the bad luck of meeting them when they were coming back to the hideout," Aries interjected.

 

"Or checking in at the hideout," Arcos added.

 

Phoenix looked at Medusa, and then back at the boys.  "So, what is it that you are proposing?"

 


	21. Chapter 21

Medusa snaked through the warehouse, between crates, ruffling up dust.  It was empty, and dark, her black eyes easily making her way through the dark.  She came to the entrance of the truck opening, and looked for a door in the floor, and couldn't find any.

 

"They'd better not have sent me in here for nothing," she hissed to herself, putting her hands on what would have been her hips if she weren't a snake.  She looked around the large, open room. The walls were lined with large crates, five or six high, with other crates stacked in a haphazard  "If I was going to have a secret entrance on a warehouse floor, where would I put it?" kind of way.  She snapped her fingers, "Under a crate!"

 

She darted to the stack of crates nearest her, wrapped her body around the bottom one, and nudged it as gently as she could along the floor.  It made a scraping noise, and she stopped, listening.   When she heard nothing, she began to move the crate stack again.  Underneath it was nothing but floor.  She moved another one, and it too, was nothing but floor. 

 

"This is getting annoying," she muttered.  There was one more stack in the middle of the floor, and moving it revealed...more floor.

 

"Nnnn!"  She looked around in annoyance, and saw, along the wall, one stack of crates that was perfectly stacked.  Their corners matched up, their sides matched up.  She slithered over it, and saw it had already been moved, revealing a trap door.

 

She darted over to the open window, and gave the signal.  In a few moments, the other three were in the warehouse with her.

 

"Good girl," the Phoenix stroked Medusa's shoulder.

 

"Not bad, little sis," Aries said.  "Time to open it and see what's inside."  The ram bent down, took hold of the ring with his large hands, and heaved.  The door opened slowly, so that Arcos came over and got one side of it to help.  With the two of them together, they pried it open, the air compressing hinges hissing as they did.

 

Medusa covered her nose.  "That smells awful."

 

"Like some sort of chemical," Phoenix added. 

 

They all looked at each other, and then at the open trap door. 

 

"I'll go in first," Arcos said, "Aries, you're after me.  Then Medusa, then Mama can bring up the rear."

 

Each of them nodded, and they descended into the dimly lit room.  The stairs ended at a long hallway.   There was a soft, faintly pink light in at the end of it.  Walking down gently, they noticed that the floor was the same strange metal they had come across in the T.C.R.I. building.  Staying near the wall, they worked their way to the doorway, and peeked in.  There were no robot-riding brains or spaceship-riding brains, but only one lone human standing at the other end of the room.  He was wearing khaki pants, and a brown wool sports coat.  His white hair peeked through the bottom of a fedora.

 

"Turn around real slow, buddy," Arcos said, as the three of them entered the room.

 

The man did as he was told, and all four of them started with surprise.

 

"You're Jack Kurtzman!" Aries exclaimed. 

 

He held a digital camera in his hand.  "You're the Children of the Phoenix."

 

"You know who we are?"  Arcos asked.  All them still had their weapons drawn, pointing at him.

 

"Yes," he said.  "Lots of people know who you are."  He then turned his eyes to their mother.  "You must be the Phoenix herself."

 

"Yes," she drawled out slowly.

 

"You're difficult to get a clear photograph of," he admitted.

 

She raised her eyebrows in doubt.  "I am, eh?"

 

"You are good at staying the shadows," he continued.  "Most of my photos of you are from...before."

 

"Before what?" she asked.

 

"Before you were kidnapped by the Kraang."

 

Phoenix almost dropped her slingshot.  "You know that?"

 

"I know lots of things.  I know you are Phoebe Laferrier, 'one of the most watched up-and-coming poets in America'," he said the last part with his reporter voice, "and before that, you were Phoebe Trice, one of the star gymnasts for your University, and one of the heirs to Trice Industries .  I know you were kidnapped by the Kraang, and you were experimented on.  And I know you go around the city, doctoring up mutants and the homeless."

 

"How do you know this?" she asked again, in a whisper. 

 

Arcos stepped in front of his mother protectively,  "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

 

"I'm researching the Kraang," he said simply.  "But I am surprised to see you here."

 

"Why?"  Medusa slithered forward, so that she was in the front of the line, her body undulating dangerously.

 

"I'm not the enemy, Medusa," he said, holding up his hands.  "I'm trying to do the same thing as you, stop the Kraang."

 

"How are you trying to stop the Kraang?" Aries said, swinging his ax lightly.  "You gonna blind them with the flash on your camera?"

 

"How do you know about us?" the Phoenix asked, her slingshot still drawn. 

 

He smiled.  "Through my research.  You," he nodded toward her, "are known by lot so mutants, many who've never met you.  Mutants don't have a lot of doctors among them."  He then motioned to the rest of them, "The Children of the Phoenix are closely allied with The Grey Cat gang."

 

The last sentence gave Phoenix a twitch. 

 

He nodded toward Aries' ax.  "I'm on your side."

 

"How can we believe what you say?" Aries asked, taking a step forward.

 

"I have a gun in my waist band," he said, putting both hands in the air.  "You can check if you want."

 

Medusa was on him in an instant, lifting his sports jacket.  She then patted him down, her little hands quickly flying over his body, and then turned to the others.  "That's all he has."

 

They put their weapons away, and looked around the room.  It was filled with what looked like giant graduated cylinders.  Inside each one was something that looked like a mix of animal and human that had gone wrong, their bodies a warped mismatch of parts.

 

"What is this place?" Arcos asked.

 

"It's a storage facility," Kertmzan explained.  "This is one of the places where they keep their failed experiments to study."

 

The Phoenix walked up to one of the beakers, it was about four feet tall, and filled with a pale green liquid.  In it floated what looked like a cross between a llama and a person.  All four of its legs were that of the llama, it's head was human shaped, but had the llama's nose, mouth, and eyelids.  It's torso was warped, some of it llama, some of it human, like a jigsaw puzzle poorly put together.  She could tell from its naked body that it was a girl.  She touched glass gently.  "The poor creatures," she said.   "This must be what happened to Aetos."

 

"Aetos?" Kurtzman asked.

 

Phoenix didn't answer him.

 

"Why are the Kraang doing experiments like this?" asked Medusa.

 

"I don't know yet," he said.  "But I am going to find out."

 

"How did you find out about this place?"  Phoenix turned away from the jars and looked at him hard.

 

"My research lead me here," he said.

 

"What research?"  Arcos came to stand by his mother, almost twice her height and more than twice her girth.

 

"I've been researching the Kraang," he put his camera in his coat pocket.  "They've been around for thousands of years.  They are doing something with our genetics," he motioned to the jars around them.  "With the genetics of every kind of living thing."

 

"How are you conducting this research?" Phoenix asked, "to know about us.  And so much about the Kraang?"

 

"The Kraang are intimately connected to the mutant population.  It is the mutagen that makes them," he motioned to them in the room.  "All of you."

 

"We already know that," Medusa said with a slight hiss, her body continuously undulating around in circles about him.  "She asked you how are you conducting your research."

 

"By observation," he looked surprised that they didn't know that.

 

"You've observed the Kraang changing people in the mutants?"  Aries asked.  "You've observed us?"

 

"Not directly..." his voice trailed off.  "I have observed the Kraang transporting mutagen from one location to another.  And I've gathered enough information to know the mutagen transforms those who touch it."

 

"Then how do you know about us?" Aries came over to his sister, towering over Kurtzman.

 

"I've seen you in action," he gestured to Arcos and Phoenix, to include them.  "You're all very impressive."

 

"What else do you know about us?" Aries asked.

 

"Enough about that, we talk about it later.  Tell us about--"  Arcos stopped talking abruptly as voices drifted down the hallway.

 

All five of them faced the doorway, drawing out their weapons.  Please don't let it be those turtles, Phoenix thought.  There is no way we'll be able to get out of this room if it is them.

 

A man in a business suit followed by two robot-riding brains came in the room, guns drawn.  The sight of both the black business suit and the Kraang, sitting with it's eyes closed in the belly of the robot, still brought her near to panic.  She drew back her slingshot and began firing.

 

There were projectiles everywhere.  The 'theeewwww" of the lasers, blazing a sickening pink, the bang of Kurtzman's handgun, the "thwap" of her slingshot, the crack of Medusa's whip, all filled the air with noise, bouncing off the glass containers.  One of the projectiles burst open a container, and the chemical goo that was holding the body inside gushed out onto the ground. 

 

Aries swing his battleaxe, slicing one of the robots, right at the Kraang, in half.  Both the businessman and the other robot turned to him, giving the others an opening to fire upon them.  Medusa tied one's arms to its side with her whip, and Arcos struck it over the head, so that the entire thing collapsed in on itself.  Kurtzman and Phoenix shot at the businessman, the gun perforating the droid beneath, and Phoenix pelting the Kraang in it's torso.

 

"Break open every one of these containers," Phoenix ordered, turning her slingshot to the jars.  Her children followed suit, with Kurtzman looking at her like she was crazy.

 

"What are you doing?" he cried.

 

"Making sure none of these bodies is desecrated any more than they already have been," she spat out.

 

As the last of the jars was shattered, Kurtzman asked, "How is this going to prevent that?"

 

"It isn't," she answered.  "This is."  She took a lighter out of small medicine bag that she carried with her in case she had to sterilize medical instruments when they were out fighting.  Lighting it, she put it to one of the bodies on the floor, and it burst into flame.  "Out!" she ordered.

 

Everyone complied.

 

From across the street, in the alley, the five of them watched as the warehouse caught fire.  After a few minutes, they heard fire sirens in the distance.

 

"Time for us to go," Arcos said.

 

Phoenix looked at Kurtzman.  "You need a ride home?" she asked.

 

He shook his head, "No, but thanks."  He took a business card out of his pocket.  "Here." He wrote his address on the back, and Phoenix took it.  "Call or come by if you ever need anything.  I might have something that will help you sometime."

 

"Thank you," Phoenix said, as they retreated farther into the alley.  "We just might."

 

***

 

The next night, Phoebe went out alone to clinic, much to her children's chagrin.  "I can take care of myself," she assured them.  "I am not a china teacup."

 

"What about the last time you were attacked, when we weren't with you?"

 

"I was handling that just fine, wasn't I?"  They had to reluctantly agree.  "Besides, this is not a debate.  I am going out, you three go play superheroes.  I don't feel like being a superhero tonight"

 

She ended up in a block of abandoned apartment buildings, sitting on the steps of one of them, waiting for something to happen.  It was chilly, she was wearing a sweater, and occasionally rubbed her arms and stomped her feet for warmth.

 

The murder of crows found her, and had more emotional complaints than any physical ailments.  She listened to them, nodding, and giving advice when she could.  She was quite sure they wouldn't heed it,  so healing their heads wasn't going to work with her amateur psychotherapy  skills.

 

After she'd waited for about half the night, she took Kurtzman's card out of her pocket.  He wasn't too terribly far from where she was, and she had more questions for him than the crows had had complaints for her.

 

She got his apartment by jumping rooftops, but when she went down to street level, she went into the apartment building by the front door.  Once inside, she felt awkwardly out of place, as if she didn't belong here, in the stairway of an apartment, clean and neat, with people living in the all spaces, probably all clean and neat.  She got to his door, and knocked on it, feeling very silly. She didn't even knock on her children's doors to their bedrooms.  When was the last time I knocked on a door? she wondered. 

 

The door opened to reveal a tired looking and disheveled Kurtzman.  He looked surprised, and took a step back.  "The Phoenix," he said, almost confused.

 

"You said to come by, that you might information we could use," she reminded him.

 

He moved out of the doorway, and motioned for her to come in.  "Of course," he said.  "I just wasn't expecting you so soon."

 

"It seems you don't expect very much of us at all, Mr. Kurtzman," she said with a smile.

 

"Uh, no!"  He shook his head, "that isn't what I meant."

 

She smiled sweetly, "I know," she closed the door behind her with a soft click.  "I came for some information."

 

"Are your children not here?"

 

"No, they are out doing whatever it is they are doing," she replied.  "They may be my children, but they are not children anymore."

 

Kurtzman nodded, and motioned for her to sit down on the couch.  "How can I help you then, Phoenix?"

 

"I want to know how you know about us," she said.

 

"I told you, in my resear--"

 

"No," she cut him off firmly but gently.  "I mean, I want to know how you really know about us.  How did you get your information?"

 

He nodded, understanding.  "When people say that they've been attacked by giant animal men, it isn't hard to get information on them."

 

"The people, or the giant animal men?"

 

"Both," Kurtzman smiled.  "And when some lady goes around healing animal men and homeless people and then disappears into the night, it isn't too hard to get information either."

 

"You said I was hard to get a photograph of," she remembered, "does that mean you have photos of us?"

 

He stood up and went to the filing cabinet.  He took out a file, and handed it to her.  The tab said, "Children of the Phoenix" on it.  "I'm an investigative journalist," he said, "I have a lot of connections."  He sat down next to her on the other side of the couch.  "When I hear of something odd, I go and investigate it.  I heard of these three animal people that I didn't recognize the description of, and went out to investigate."

 

Phoenix looked at several photos of her three children fighting their 'bad guys', and a few of them with the three standing about, as if on watch. 

 

"I followed them, to see who they were, what they were up to," Kurtzman continued.  "Once I figured out they were...the good guys..." Phoenix smiled at this, "I didn't worry about them so much,and concentrated on other mutants."

 

"You've tracked other mutants, too?"  This was getting very creepy to her.

 

"You of all people should know yours aren't the only mutants in the city," he said.  "And I like to call it investigating, not tracking."

 

Phoenix went through the file slowly, finding a few photos of her, mainly her arms sticking out of the shadows with her slingshot in hand, or a fuzzy and indistinct figure in the shadows.

 

"It took me a little longer to figure out you," he told her, "and to make the connection that the same Phoenix who was helping people was the mother of these three mutants."  He shook his head.  "It didn't seem a likely match: a doctor one day and a vigilante the next."

 

"I'm not a doctor," she said.  "I don't even have any medical training."

 

"Could have fooled me," he replied.  "And a whole bunch of mutants out there."

 

"You've talked to these other mutants that you've tracked down?" she asked.

 

"Yes," he said.   "It isn't that hard."

 

"It's not?" She had never seen, heard, or spoken of a mutant until her encounter with the Kraang.

 

"Most mutants engage in some sort of criminal activity," he began.

 

"Most of them aren't criminals!" she protested. "They are doing the best they can with what they have."

 

"I didn't say they were criminals," he interjected.

 

"And they have nothing!" she continued.

 

"I said they engage in criminal activity."  She glared at him, and he looked back at her.  "I know that they have to engage in criminal activity in order to survive."  He smiled, "Dumpster diving is illegal, you know?"

 

"It's called shopping to a mutant," she said defiantly.

 

"The point is, where criminal activity happens, there are criminals, and where there are criminals, there is information.  Money talks."

 

"You pay people to tell you about mutants?"

 

"I...encourage people with money and things," he said.

 

"And you talk about mutants being criminals," she muttered, looking back down at the file on her lap.  She caught sight of a newspaper clipping peeking out, and slid it out from under the stack of other papers.   It was an obituary, "In Memorium" at the top, "Phoebe Marie (Trice) Laferrier".  She rummaged through the papers in her lap, and found clippings of her childhood gymnastic days, when her father had hoped she'd be on the Olympic Team, of  her university days winning her medals.  There was a clipping from a sports news scandal rag about how her father, the business tycoon of  Trice Industries had cut her off financially for marrying against his wishes, a nobody and a black man, with her wedding photo.  There were the birth announcements of both of her children, and then--

 

She gasped.  It was a recent photo of her children, Elisabetta and Jacque, grown up.  It was a wedding photo, her daughter in a beautiful white dress, set of beautifully against her milk chocolate skin.  Her son, looking so much like his father, stood next to Stephane, his hair white, all of them as beautiful as ever.

 

She couldn't keep from tearing, so matter how many deep breaths she took.  "When was this taken?" she whispered.

 

"Last September," he answered.  "A little more than a year ago."

 

"They don't look like me at all," her voice was still just an aspiration, she couldn't make the sound work.

 

"They have your smile," Kurtzman said, taking the photo from her.

 

She looked up at him, and the tears overflowed from her eyelids.  She sniffed, and wiped her face with her hands.  "Are they happy?" she asked.  "Did they grow up happy?"

 

"Yes," he said.  "They're very happy."

 

She nodded, and took another deep breath.  She wasn't sure if that made her feel good or not.  "How did you figure out that I was me?" she asked very quietly, trying to change the subject.

 

"Process of elimination," he said.  "Your hair threw me off for a long time until I met a homeless man who has known you for almost 15 years.  He said your hair was much darker, and much redder when you were younger.  After that, it was easy to find a Phoebe who had disappeared about the time you showed up helping people, who had dark red hair.  There aren't that many Phoebes out there, and there are even fewer with auburn hair.  It helped that your picture was plastered all over the internet."

 

"My picture is plastered all over the internet?" she didn't like the sound of that.

 

"All the newspaper clippings are digitized now.  You were in the local papers a lot."

 

"What do you plan on doing with all this information, Mr. Kurtzman?"  She closed the file on her lap and handed it back to him. 

 

"Help how I can," he said.  "Like I am now."

 

"You haven't helped us in our fight against the Kraang," she told him.  "You've just satiated my curiosity."

 

"I know you freed one of the two scientists that have escaped from the Kraang," he said.  "I can tell you where one of their detention centers is."

 

"Now that, Mr, Kurtzman, is information that can help."

 


	22. Chapter 22

The unbidden thought had lead the Phoenix to an apartment complex in a run down neighborhood.  Someone of great artistic talent had spray painted a beautiful piece of graffiti on the concrete wall of the building she was standing next to, listening to a mutant earwig complain.

 

"And with it getting cold," he was saying in a clicky voice, "I don't know what I'm going to do.  I am cold all the time, I can't figure out how to stay warm."

 

"You have a while yet before you need to worry about the cold," Phoenix assured him gently.  "Before winter sets in, try to find a sheltered place to stay, and clothes that will protect your body."  She wrapped one of his six legs with two sticks held in place by plarn she and the children had made.  "If it gets below freezing, bundle up as best you can and sleep until it warms up."

 

"How will I keep my legs from freezing?" he whined.  "How will I keep the frost from my eyes? I have no eyelids!"

 

"How did you survive last winter?" she asked as calmly as she could.

 

"I stayed in a compost pile for most of the dead of winter..." he went on.

 

If this man had a wife before he was mutated, Phoenix thought guiltily, I bet she's not sad he's gone.

 

***

 

"She's gonna be really mad that were here without her," Arcos said, crossing his arms.

 

"All we're doing is checking the place out," Aries said, "we're not going to try to get anyone out of it."

 

"It's reconnaissance," Medusa reminded him.

 

"And I agreed to this, why?" Arcos watched the building from across the street in the shadows of an alley.

 

"Because you didn't want to miss the fun of checking out a Kraang detention facility," Aries said.

 

"It seems awfully quiet to be a detention facility."

 

"Like they're going to have guards and guns and a big sign that says, 'We keep kidnapped scientists and experiment on animals here'," Medusa hissed.  "It is called camouflage."

 

"You go camouflage, snake-breath," Arcos muttered.

 

"You guys coming or not?"  Aries crept, looking rather foolish with his large, woolly frame in the dim light of the streetlamps, crouched over and trying to tiptoe on his mostly-hoofed feet.

 

The other two followed him, creeping along the side of the building toward the front door.

 

"I don't hear anything," Aries whispered.

 

They turned the corner, and froze when they heard, "There isn't anything here.  We might as well go."  Out of the door came four well armed turtles.

 

The one with the red mask pointed in their direction as the four of them got into a fighting stance.  "I told you!" he yelled.  "We're at an old Kraang facility and who shows up?!"

 

The Children of the Phoenix all drew their weapons, taking their own fighting stances.  "C'est merde de  le taureau!" Aries growled, lifting his ax in the air and heading toward the turtles.

 

All four of the turtles leapt into the air, with the blue masked one landing in front of Arcos.  Arcos swung his sledge hammer, but the turtle easily danced out of the way.  "She's told you that isn't how it's translated," he yelled at his brother, blocking a blow from the blue masked turtle's curved swords.

 

Aries  was facing off the orange and the purple masked turtles.  "If she would tell me the proper translation, I could use it!"  He hit the wooden staff of the purple one with the handle of his ax, while the orange one kicked him in the shoulder.  He let out a grunt as he slid across the ground.

 

"Just say it in English!"  Medusa cried, whipping at the red masked turtle, who was circling her like a wrestler.

 

Aries got up, and punched as the orange masked turtle came at him again, hitting him in the gut and sending him flying.  "This is bullsh--!"  A staff hit to the head.    He shook it and glared at the purple masked turtle.

 

"Uh oh," the turtle said. 

 

"Uh oh, is right, ya little--"

 

The orange masked turtle came up behind Aries, and threw the end of a nun chuck at him, bonking him in the head again.

 

"Obviously hitting him in the head doesn't do anything!"  the purple masked one shouted.

 

"But my head hitting you will do something," he huffed, putting his head down, horns in front, and running toward the turtle.

 

Arcos swung and parried, swung and parried against the blue masked turtle, but he couldn't get a hit in at all.  The turtle had struck him twice with a swift kick to the stomach and another to the chest.  Frustration built up in the bear at his inability to make the fight move forward, the entire situation was a dance of swing and parry.  He let out a roar, and saw the blue masked turtle's eye widen for a moment, before he regained his composure, and raised his curved swords against Arcos' hammer.

 

Medusa and the red masked turtle circled each other, Medusa rippled dangerously, her body curling around as they lapped.  "Aren't you gonna dance with me?"  She cracked her snakewhip and opened her mouth wide to show her fangs.  "Give it a crack."

 

"Glad you asked," he broke the circle and leapt at her, his three pronged knives pointed in her direction, "I've been waiting for the invitation!"

 

Medusa darted out of his way, her body making and arch as she did.  She turned her head back toward him while the rest of her body was still in the air, and struck toward him again.  When she landed, there was only air.  She saw him out of the corner of her eye leap off of the wall toward her.  She arched her body just as he would have landed on her, so he flew through where she'd been..  He landed and rolled, springing up, in fighting stance again.  "Oh, you don't dance to badly," Medusa told him, curling her body in on herself tightly.

 

"I dance better than you," he replied.

 

"Hey guys," the orange masked one jumped off of Aries' back and flipped in the air.  "Where's the disembodied arm mom?"

 

"I told you, it isn't possible to have disembodied arms!" the purple masked one was getting worked up.

 

"Are you calling my mother a set of arms?"  Aries asked.  He swung his ax at the purple masked one, who nimbly jumped backward from it.

 

"Hey, Ramshead," the orange called behind him.  "Your mom isn't just arms, she's arms with really bad aim!"

 

Aries let out a loud huff, lowered his head again, and ran toward the turtle.

 

"I mean, who fights with a slingshot?" the purple masked one said.  "A five year old?"

 

Aries rammed into the wall, missing the orange turtle by a few inches, and immediately turned around to see the purple masked one coming at him with roundhouse kick.  He was struck in the cheek, and went rolling against the wall.

 

Arcos was still playing swing and parry with the blue masked turtle.  He hadn't gotten in any hits, but he hadn't gotten hit again either.  "Where is she?" the turtle asked. 

 

"Not here," Arcos growled, swinging his sledgehammer and hitting the wall, causing sparks and bits of brick to go flying.  "So there isn't anyone to keep us from kicking your butts!"

 

"That's not how I remember it," the blue masked turtle said calmly.  "I seem to recall it was your butts she saved."  He used Arcos' recovery to attack with his curved swords, but Arcos managed to roll out of the way, causing the swords to spark against the wall.

 

"It doesn't matter," the red masked one said.  "Because when were done with you, we're gonna find her, and finish her off too!"

 

Medusa hissed and darted at him.  He strafed out of the way, and hit her body with his elbow as it flew past.  She recovered quickly, bringing the far side of her body up to launch him across the parking lot.

 

Arcos looked over, and saw her free for the moment.  "Medusa, go!" he yelled.  "We can handle them!"

 

"No," she called, "I'm not leaving you here."  She made to dart at the red masked turtle again.

 

"You're the fastest.  Go!" Arcos ordered.

 

She looked conflicted for a moment, but then shot out of the parking lot to the street and down an alleyway.

 

"Oh no," the red masked turtle ran after her, "we're not done dancing yet."

 

"I'm going to have to make it a rain check, lover boy," Medusa called over her shoulder, her arms at her side so it looked as if she was a giant boa constrictor with a shirt on flying up fire escapes to the rooftops.  "I've got a date with someone else."

 

She was gaining distance between he and her, but she was getting farther away from where her mother was at clinic.  She thought she might be able to loose him if she varied her latitude, and it seemed to be working...by inches.  He was two rooftops away from her.  She wasn't going to loose him, she realized.  He shouldn't be that fast, she could loose anyone.  She changed direction to the way she wanted to go.

 

She saw the Phoenix talking with a giant insect looking mutant, nodding her head.  She had her "I am being kind to you, but I would really rather wish you'd go away," face on.  Medusa swept down, and in one move, wrapped her body around her mother in a coil, and bounded back up to the roofs.  "Time to go, Mama," she said as she did.

 

"My bag," Phoenix reached for it, as she was carried through the air at a frightening speed.     "What's going on?"

 

"We're being chased by a turtle," Medusa said unenthusiastically.

 

"By a turtle!" her mother cried.  "Where did a turtle come from?"

 

"I don't know, Mama," Medusa said, "an egg?"

 

"Very funny Medussssaaaa!" Phoenix strung out her daughters name as the sound of a projectile whizzed by her ear.  "Let me get my arms free, so I can shoot at him."

 

Medusa moved her coils as she fled, and Phoenix grabbed her slingshot and began to shoot two bullets at a time toward the turtle following them, who was rapidly catching up.  She didn't get anywhere near hitting him.

 

She waited until Medusa flung them across two rooftops, so she wasn't bounced so much, and rapidly fired three times, two bullets each.  She couldn't see if they hit the turtle or not, but she heard him give out a small growl as he caught up with them. 

 

Then she heard a sickening "thhpp", followed by Medusa crying out in a way she hadn't heard since she was tiny.   She saw in the coil that was holding Phoenix across the solar plexus had a razor stuck in it. Medusa landed on the rooftop, letting go of Phoenix as she did so.   The snake's momentum kept her going, until she fell off of the other side of the roof.

 

Phoenix ran after her, and watched as she disappeared over the side of the rooftop.  "Medusa!!"  She heard a soft thunk behind her, and turned to see the red masked turtle standing at the other side of the roof.

 

Anger swelled up inside of the Phoenix, making her ears fill with the sound of her beating heart, making her throat swell with rush of her blood.  "How dare you hurt my daughter?!" she thundered.  She launched herself at him, with a force she didn't know her legs could carry.

 

The move took the turtle by surprise, and she rammed into him, knocking him over.  She drew her knife  as he flipped her over with his legs, and flipped himself back onto his feet.   Phoenix landed on her hands, the knife in her fingers just as Razz had practiced with her so many times, and she pushed to her own feet, her beautiful knife in front of her.

 

The turtle rushed at her,  and she dropped to the ground and slid between his legs, swiping at him and missing.  The world disappeared around her, and all she saw was this boy, who had struck her beloved Medusa with a projectile of some sort; this boy who was helping brain-like aliens to mutate and experiment on people; this boy who she was going to pummel into the ground the way she hadn't had the stomach to do when her stunning Ailurosa had been avenged. 

 

 _Don't_ , said the unbidden thought.

 

She didn't even deign to think of a response.

 

She sprang up, and turned to face the turtle, who had done the same thing on his jump down.  He held his three pointed knives out, and she held her own carved knife in front of her.  He rushed at her again, and she cartwheeled out his way.

 

He said to her.  "You don't have my brother to tell me not to cut you up into little pieces."

 

She glowered, "I doubt you could."

 

 _Don't_ , said the unbidden thought again.

 

Why not? she snarled in her head.  Tears came to her eyes as the turtle ran at her again. 

 

_Consider the floor._

 

"What?" she said out loud to the thought, putting her knife in front of her to parry his strike.

 

"I'm gonna cut you into little pieces," the red masked turtle repeated through gritted teeth.

 

_Consider the floor._

 

She flipped backward to get some distance between her and the turtle.

 

 _Consider the floor,_ the voice was insistent.

 

She looked down at the rooftop, expecting to see something that would help her, something to give her an advantage, when she felt deep impact on her side, and saw the turtle's foot collide with her ribcage.  She flew into the access door of the building, her breath being knocked out of her.  She tried to breath in, but the pain in her side was excruciating, and her breath was shallow.

 

He was coming at her again, his entire body in the air, his three pronged knives in front of him aimed at her chest.  Then, Medusa was there, her strong, thick body whipping like a flag in the wind.  She hit him with her tail, and he went soaring to the side, hitting the roof top with a hard thud, and skidding across the surface.  He hit the edge of the rooftop and stopped, not moving.

 

"'Dusa," Phoenix staggered forward, but the intake of breath hurt when she tried to talk, and she fell to her knees.

 

"Come on," Medusa's voice was strained.  "We have to go before he comes to."  She wrapped herself around her mother again.

 

"You can't carry me," Phoenix managed to get out.

"You can't walk," Medusa began moving, and then, at a much slower rate than she had been, slithered down the balconies below her to street level.  "We have to get home."

 

Phoenix looked down to see blood covering Medusa's scales.  "You're bleeding," she said softly.

 

"So are you," Medusa replied.

 

She made her way through the back streets, her body coiled around her mother.  Phoenix watched the wound in her daughter grow in size as she moved, the blade twisting with Medusa's movements.  She was afraid to take it out, lest she bleed even more.  From the looks of it, she didn't need to bleed anymore.

 

Medusa got to the warehouse and climbed the stairs, depositing her mother in the couch and collapsing on the floor in front of it.  Phoenix got up to go to her medical bookshelf, and gasped at the movement.  "Mama, you need to sit down," Medusa said.

 

"I need to deal with your cut," Phoenix answered, taking small steps, and holding her ribs tightly in an attempt to lessen the pain.  She got her her surgical instruments and various lotions and potions and began to clean the cut.

 

She removed the blade, it looked like something in-between a razor and a tiny little knife.  Dropping it on the floor, she put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.  Medusa hissed in a intake of breath.  "I'm sorry Curly Que," Phoenix said gently.

 

A commotion on the stairs snapped both of their heads up, and Phoenix thought that she might throw up her heart, it was so high in her throat.

 

Aries and Arcos came bursting in the room, both of them with looks of horror on their faces.   "Whose bleeding?" Arcos demanded.

 

"Medusa," said Phoenix.

 

"Mama," said Medusa at the same time.

 

"There's a trail of blood all up the stairs," Aries said. 

 

"What's that?"  Arcos dropped down beside his mother and sister and pointed to the razor. 

 

"That is what made Medusa bleed everywhere," Phoenix said, her voice in healer mode, even though she spoke through gritted teeth.  She threaded a needle with horse hair, and dropped it in a cup of antiseptic wash, and then began blotting the wound so she could see better. 

 

"Just do your magic, Mama," Aries said, seeing the needle.

 

"I need to stitch her up, so the bleeding will stop."

 

"Stop the bleeding with your magic like you did last time," he insisted.

 

"No," she said tightly.

 

"Why not?"

 

She turned to him, anger in her eyes.  "Because this is not a rat bite!" she snapped.

 

Aries fell silent as she turned back to Medusa.

 

"Try to stay still, Curly Que, I know it hurts," Phoenix instructed.  "Arcos, will you get my strong sedative, it's labeled Sedative III."  The bear brought a honey bottle to her, "Give her a big mouthful."

 

Medusa opened her mouth, and Arcos poured some of the viscous liquid in.

 

"It will help with the pain, and to calm you down," Phoenix said, putting her needle down. She then put her hands over the wound, and did her 'magic'.  "All done."  She turned to put her items away and let out a cry, grabbing her side.

 

"What's the matter?"  Arcos and Aries both reached for her.

 

"That turtle kicked me," she said.  "I think he broke my ribs."

 

"What do we do?" Aries asked quickly, "what do we do?"

 

"Start sewing bandages together to we can wrap my torso with a comfrey compress," her voice was very tight.  " And get me my willow bark and feverfew tincture.  Uhhh, I hurt."

 

"How did you get away?" Medusa asked her brothers.

 

"We ran," Aries said.

 

"As fast as we could," Arcos added.

 

"They didn't follow you?" Medusa asked, reaching out and stroking her mother's shouder.

 

"We meant for them to," Arcos said, "to get them away from you, but they didn't.  They followed you and the other turtle."

 

"We didn't see them," Medusa told him.

 

"Good," Arcos said.  "We don't need to see them again for a long time."

 


	23. Chapter 23

The Phoenix couldn't remember the last time she hurt so badly.  Even in her prime, with falling to the floor practicing jumps and flips on the uneven bars, she didn't hurt this much.  But then, she'd never broken any ribs before.

 

She gave the tingly light to each of her three kids, and then to herself at regular intervals.  All of their scratches and scrapes had closed up, her own had disappeared, but the pounding that she felt like she took didn't go away.  The children all claimed they felt better, but her own aching ribs did not abate when she administered the tingly light to herself. 

 

For over a week, she felt she could barely move. Using energy to heal always left her with a soft alertness, so she found it harder to sleep than normal.  All she could do was lay there and read, or lay with her eyes closed and hope the pain went away.  After the first two weeks, she felt almost better.  She made Medusa stay still for two days, despite healing her.  She plied her with her strong sedative honey tincture to calm her down and make her doze.  She was afraid to take it herself in case one of the children needed something.  Arcos and Aries were errand runners, as their injuries seemed to have be bearable after the next morning.

 

"I don't get it," Aries had told her during her convalescence.  "How come all of your cuts healed like that," he tried to snap, but the way his fingers worked, it made no sound.  "But your ribs aren't?"

 

"I think they are, Lamb's Ear," she assured him, unwrapping her torso.  "It usually takes six to eight weeks to heal broken ribs.  The fact that I can move after two weeks is a good sign."

 

"But your cuts heal instantly," he persisted.  "Even Medusa's gouge has healed faster than your ribs.  And you're the one who does the magic."

 

"It isn't magic, Aries," she said, laying the bandage on the table, and gently wiping her side with a cloth.  Her ribs showed against a toned stomach.  The pale skin was lined with silvery marks from her panties to sternum, webbing their way around her belly button like ghostly fingers.  Her 'war scars' she called, stretch marks from her two pregnancies.  "I could teach you to do it if you want," the bruise on her side was completely gone now, looking as if she hadn't been hurt at all.  She still couldn't breath deeply, it hurt too much.  "Everyone knows how to do it," she smiled.  "Sometimes we just need to be reminded that we know."

 

"No thanks," Aries waved his hand, giving her the same excuse he always did. "With all that meditating and yoga and gardening, I don't think that I would have the patience."

 

She gave him the same response, "I am not sure that any of that has anything to do with it."

 

"I think it does," was his same retort as always.

 

During her convalescence, she had not meditated at all.  Nor had she written. She felt betrayed by the voice that was not her voice.  If it wasn't for the unbidden thought, she wouldn't have been an invalid for close to two weeks.  Well, she probably would have been, there was no way she'd would have been able to last against that turtle.  But at least it would have been her own fault.  She gave the unbidden thoughts more thought than she normally did, however, in thinking of it negatively.  Perhaps not talking to it was punishing it.  She hoped it was, because that was the reason she wasn't talking to it.  It didn't talk to her, though, and she was disappointed that it didn't.  What do you expect, she told herself, that some voice in your head is going to beg you to come and talk to it?  It sounded very silly when she put that way.

 

***

 

Chategris called for her to come to the cargo bay on the third week after their fight with the turtles.  Phoenix was still slightly sore, she wasn't training or stretching properly yet, but she could walk and breath without hurting.  She dismissed the boy whom Chategris had sent with a wave of her hand.  "I can't jump over rooftops right now," she said.  "He's going to have to send his people here."

 

The young mutant looked conflicted, his eyes moving from her to each of her children and back to her.  "But, they can't come here..." he said.  "They barely got back there...Chategris..."

 

"Oh, alright," she said in a huff.  "Go and tell them I am on my way.  I'm walking, so I'm not going to be as fast."  She put her messenger bag over her head.  "There is no way I'm jumping for quite a while, I think."

 

"Please hurry," the boy said, before jumping out of the garden window.

 

"You want one of us to come with you?" Arcos asked.

 

"No, you stay here," she headed toward the stairs.  "I'm probably safer in Grey Cat territory than anywhere else in the city."

 

"One of the benefits of being the leader's crush, huh?" Aries threw over his shoulder at her.

 

"Not funny, Aries," she called back from the stairs.  "Don't even kid about that."

 

She was surprised at how long it took her to get to the cargo bay from the ground.  Granted, she wasn't walking as fast she normally would, but it still took her a while to get there.  Several members of the Grey Cats came to meet her when she came closer to the bay, but she refused to let any of them carry her.  "I have been hurt enough, lately, thank you," she said.  "I don't need to be hurt by someone trying to be nice."

 

"Did the ninjas attack you, too?" asked Dezi, who had come to walk with her.

 

"Ninjas?"  Phoenix asked, her eyes going wide.  "You were attacked by ninjas?"

 

"Yes," Dezi answered.  "That's why we need your help."

 

"Oh no," Phoenix muttered to herself, and began to run to the cargo bay, every step jarring her insides.  When she got to the cargo bay, several people were gathered, in obvious need of medical attention.  Three of them were lain out, passed being helped by the Phoenix.  "Oh no," she said again.

 

"Ma cherie," Chategris' voice was tired sounding.  "You've come," he said in French.  He looked like he'd been hit by a bus.

 

"Chategris," she said, answering him in the same language.  "What happened here?  Dezi says you were attacked by ninjas!"

 

"Oui," he tried to sit up straight, and cringed.  "They were on my turf.  Cannot be having other gangs on my turf."

 

"They were a gang?"  She looked him over, trying to see what was wrong with him, and then shook her head.  "Who's hurt the most?" she called out in English.

 

"Chategris should be--" several people started.

 

"Whoever is hurt the most, gets taken care of first," she said firmly, "and then up line.  All of you," she turned to Chategris, "know that."

 

The leader of the Grey Cats waved his hand in a majestic manner, and with no maliciousness in his voice said, "Oui."

 

She began to tend to patients, many of whom had injuries similar to the ones she and her children had obtained.  "There is a gang of ninjas roaming the city?" Phoenix asked, switching back to French.  Please don't let it be so, please, please, please, her mind chattered.

 

"I suppose so," Chategris answered.  "They acted like a gang, and there was no doubt they were ninjas."

 

"How do you know they were ninjas?"

 

"They were dressed like them."

 

"Dressed like them?"   She turned to face him for a moment.  "They were human?"

 

"Some of them," he said.  "There was also a huge dog, and fish."

 

"A fish?" she asked.  "How could there be a fish?"

 

"He had metal legs," Chategris said.  "And he knew how to use them."

 

"Were there any turtles?" she asked slowly.

 

"Turtles?"  Chategris shook his head.  "No, mon cherie, no turtles."  He looked at her closely.  "Have you met up with ninja turtles?"

 

She sighed, "Yes."  She switched patients.  "They are working with the aliens, I think."

 

"Then the aliens have quite an advantage," Chategris said.  Hearing him say that gave her a sense of dread.  The usually over-confident leader of the Grey Cats had been knocked down to size, and that didn't sit well with her.  "The ones we fought were...very effective."

 

Phoenix bit her lip.  "So were the ones we met up with," she said.  She glanced over at him, "You look like you'll be OK," she said, "I'm going to help you last."

 

He nodded, "Mais oui, ma cherie," he answered.  "Whatever you say."

 

She finished with the rest of the injured in quiet, sewing them, patching them, and then tingly lighting them.  After the very last one, a twisted ankle, she turned to the leader of the Grey Cats.  His third eyelid was half closed in both of his hazel eyes, and his breathing was labored.  "Oh, Chategris," she whispered, moving over to him.  "I'm sorry."  She looked him over with soft eyes, to see his glow that wasn't a glow, and concentrated on the darkest of smudges hovering over him.  She put her hands on his chest, "Is this where it hurts the most?" she asked softly in French.

 

"Non," he replied.  "My back."

 

She helped him sit up, and he moaned, but managed to do it.  He wasn't as OK as she had originally thought, a dark smudge hovered above his lower back, but she couldn't see any damage on the outside.  "Did you get kicked in the kidneys?" she asked.

 

"No, mon amour," he said.  She caught the endearment, but said nothing.  Now was not the time.  "I was kicked by the fish in the stomach."   She nodded, and gently worked to take his vest off.  

 

"I think you've received internal damage," she said. "That must have been some kick."

 

"It was," he said, lowering his head as she administered to him.  "I have never seen fighters like them before.  The humans, they were easy.  The dog and the fish, not so much."   When Phoenix didn't answer him, he went on, "The dog was huge, ma Phenix.  Bigger than anyone I have here."

 

"I need to get you to your bed," she said, standing up, "before I do anymore."  She motioned for Razz and Klashtooth, and hey picked up the makeshift stretcher than Chategris was laying on.  He was soon in his own suite, Razz and Klashtooth excused themselves, and Phoenix started tending to him again.

 

She sat on the bed as she placed herbal compresses and salves on his body, and laid hands on him to heal him.  His third eyelid still covered half of his eyes, and that worried her greatly.  She gently took his trousers off, thankful he was wearing underwear.  He did not complain at all during her ministrations, but tried to banter with her, as if he wasn't hurt.

 

"This is not how I wanted you to undress me," he said.

 

She smiled at the remark.  "I imagine not."

 

"You imagine undressing me?" his voice was weak, but he smiled. 

 

"Non, mon ami," <No, my friend> she said.  "I think of getting you better."

 

"Ah, yes," he closed his eyes, and let out a deep breath.

 

She finished administering to him, and then covered him up with his bedsheets and blanket.  "If you get too hot, take the blanket off," she said.  "I think you're going to be out of commission for quite a while."

 

"I am to stay in bed?" he asked in annoyance with his eyes still closed.  "Like a child?"

 

"Yes," she said.  "I will tell Klashtooth and Razz, and they can sort out whatever needs to be sorted out upstairs while you're recovering."  She began to pack up her things.

 

He opened his eyes, and looked at her with that intent look he had.  "Stay with me tonight, ma Phenix," he said.

 

She hesitated, looking at him.  He was hurt, and vulnerable, and in such a state, he was asking her to stay with him.

 

 _Don't_ , said the unbidden thought.

 

"I..." she said.

 

He reached out a paw, and stroked her shoulder.  "S'il tu plais, ma Phenix," <Please, my Phoenix> he said.   She could not recall if he had ever said please to her before.

 

 _Don't_ , said the thought again.

 

Why in the world should I listen to you? Phoenix snapped in her head.  All you say is don't.

 

She sighed.  "I will stay with you until you fall asleep," she said, putting her bag on the floor and lying down on the bed next to him.

 

He wrapped his arms around her, and despite his injuries, he still had a very strong grip.  "Stay with me the entire night," he whispered.

 

_Don't_

 

"I can't Chategris," she answered quietly.  "That isn't..." she didn't know how to explain it to him.  "I will stay with you until you fall asleep," she whispered.  She felt a soft connectedness to him well up in her toward him, like she did for her teammates when she was younger.

 

 _Consider the floor,_ the thought said.

 

I'm not considering the damn floor, she answered.  Considering the floor got me hurt in the first place.

 

_Help him sleep._

 

She was surprised by the command, having just been told 'don't' so many times.  Surely the voice wasn't telling her to help him sleep the way he wanted help sleeping.

 

 _Help him sleep,_ said the voice, and then she knew what it meant.  She reached her hands up, and began to stroke his head like she would a child, or a cat in her lap.  She sent the tingly light into him, telling it, help him sleep.

 

"Mon amour," he said very sleepily, then he was breathing shallow and steady, and his arms went slack about her.

 

She got up from the soft bed, which beckoned to her with its luxuriousness.  You could tell me, she said to the voice angrily, how to  deal with him calling me his love.

 

_Consider the floor._

 

Fou le parquet, she thought.

 

***

 

"There's more of them?" Medusa's mouth hung open.  "Are you serious?"

 

"Yes," said the Phoenix.  "They did quite a number on the Grey Cats."

 

"The Kraang are gathering an army of ninjas?  What does that have to do with mutagen and trying to live here?"  Aries looked worried.

 

"Maybe to beat down rebels or something?" she said.

 

"But why ninjas?" Arcos asked.  "Why not regular soldiers, or more of those robots?"

 

"I don't know," she answered.  "All I know is what Chategris told me."

 

"How are we even going to try and do something about this?" Medusa said.  "It's just us, and all these aliens and their henchmen.  Chategris doesn't care about them, as long as they don't come into his territory."

 

"He may care now," Arcos suggested.

 

Medusa shook her head. "Razz and I have talked about it a lot.  He's interested in keeping his kingdom. Not stopping aliens, or ninja helping aliens."

 

"I think Medusa is right," Phoenix agreed.  "He doesn't have any reason to try and help us stop the Kraang right now.  He might if his turf keeps getting disrespected," she said.  "But not right now."

 

"Turtles, and dogs, and fish...this is getting out of hand," Aries muttered.

 

"And lions and tigers and bears!"  Phoenix smiled.  "Maybe next we'll get flying monkeys."

 

***

 

She couldn't sleep that night, she was too awake from all of the healings she'd done.  She felt guilty for swearing at the voice that was and was not her voice, it hadn't made her feel anywhere near as better as she hoped.  What if it didn't talk to her again?  What if even the poetry, which came from the same place in her head, went away? 

 

She wouldn't be able to bear that, if she lost the poetry.  She wrote it every day, though much of it was not worth sharing.  It helped to heal her head, to heal her heart, so she could heal others, and others besides. 

 

Talk to me, she asked the air nervously.  I am sorry for what I said.

 

 _Consider the floor,_ the answer was immediate.

 

She squished down annoyance, and looked down at the warehouse floor.  She looked up, and across the huge, open space, she saw the little yoga/dance floor, and it occurred to her, that was where she first considered the floor. 

 

She walked over to it, sat down with her legs crossed, and placed her hands in her lap, as her yoga instructor had taught her and her teammates.  She took a deep breath, and brought her knees and the floor beneath her to her mind's eye.  A moment later, the lines spread across from her along the floor, the walls, the ceiling.  One of the lines glowed greater than the rest and she knew that was the one she was to touch.  She reached out for the glowing line.  She heard it sing, a tune she might have recognized, or might not, and the world around her disappeared, and all there was was the light of the glowing string and her.

 

She followed it for a long time, the world outside the light of the glow not at visible to her at all.  The only sound was the tune that she did and did not recognize, but eventually the smell of warm decay became stronger and stronger, and the sound of water dripping and flowing joined the song.  Then, the line as gone, and the light vanished, and she was in a sewer tunnel again.  I wonder what this has to do with the floor, she thought errantly. 

 

She heard talking in the distance, the deep voice again, staccato, accented.  She couldn't place the accent, but she could eliminate a French dialect.    She still couldn't make out any distinct sounds, it was just a pleasant murmur in the distance.

 

_Consider the floor._

 

She looked down and saw only the concrete blocks of the sewer floor.  They were gray and dingy, caked with the sludge that made up raw sewage.  Slowly, as if in a movie sequence, the gray changed to a warm  brown, and came into focus as a wooden floor.  The floor was beautifully made, the maker could give her Aries a run for his money.  She could see no variation in the floor, the boards fit each other snugly, it was sanded to a smooth finish, and obviously well cared for.  And used.  She could see dents, and gouges in the wood, but that didn't detract from it's beauty.  The grain shown through whatever was used to finish it, and the smell of sewage was lessened, mixed with the smell of growing things.

 

The murmuring of the deep voice continued, the sound indistinct.  Then, as if the speaker had rushed up to her ear out of nowhere, she heard the word, "Dojo."

 

She opened her eyes in a start, and found herself in her own little gymnasium, the moon shining in the windows giving the warehouse floor a white, ghostly appearance.   She could hear the silence of the night, the noises that flowed out of it; the creaks of the warehouse, the movement of her children in their beds, the skittering of mice and rats and insects in the walls and under the floors.  The smell was that of soap and herbs, flowers that gave this place the comfort of home.

 


	24. Chapter 24

Four weeks after their encounter with the turtles, Phoenix finally felt that she could stop her self-imposed "physical therapy" and start "training" again.  Her side ached when she stretched or if she pushed herself too hard.  She consoled herself by remembering that at four weeks, she should still be sitting on the couch holding a pillow to her ribs and hoping she didn't cough, sneeze, or laugh.

 

She had tried to put her meditation experience on the back burner, but her frequent need to stop physical activity made it hard to keep her mind occupied.  She had no idea what the vision meant.  Why in the world had she been in the sewer, and then in a dojo?  She'd never even seen a dojo, except in movies, and movie sets could not be trusted to be the same as real life.  She could see no connection between a sewer tunnel and a dojo, and could see no connection between a dojo and her situation.

 

She looked up "dojo" in the set of encyclopedias that she and the children had found years ago in the high school dump.  The entry read:  "A dojo is a Japanese term that means "place of the way."  Originally, dojos were adjunct to temples.  The term can refer to a formal training place of any of the 'do' arts (see Japanese martial arts), but is typically seen as a formal gathering place of students of any Japanese martial arts, such as karate, judo, and samurai, to conduct training, examinations, and other related activities."

 

So a dojo was where all those ninjas trained.  So what?  Was she supposed to find their dojo?  Why in the world would she want to find a place where a slew of mutant and human ninjas were training?  She didn't want to find the four ninjas she'd already run into twice, much less any more of them.

 

She wrote about the word 'dojo' during her writing sessions, in hopes that the voice, which came from the same place as the poetry, would give her some more information.  Her freewrites came up hopelessly empty, venting only frustration and ignorance.  She didn't even get any poems out of the word, so she abandoned it for writing that produced something more substantial.

 

***

 

She went to the cargo bay on a regular basis for a while, to check up on her patients. 

 

Chategris teased her, "I woke up alone in the morning.  It is the first time a woman has left my bed willingly."

 

 She smiled at the playful repartee, knowing she shouldn't.  But it made her feel pretty, and desirable, despite the deepening wrinkles in her forehead and the web of fine lines around her eyes.  "So you go kicking women out of your bed when they are unwilling to go?" she asked good-naturedly.

 

"Oui," he laughed, and then winced.  "If she gets it into her head that the bed belongs to her also."

 

She shook her head, still smiling, "And they wonder why the Leader of the Grey Cats has no woman to stand by him."

 

"They do?" he raised his eyebrows, his white whiskers twitching. 

 

"I would imagine they do," she said.  "You have many people under your care who are much younger than you and have settled on one person."

 

"Ahh, but settling for one person requires the right person," he said, he blinked softly.

 

"Yes, it does," she agreed.

 

"You have not settled for anyone," Chategris countered.  "If I am not misinformed, you have not even tried to settle for anyone."

 

"Settling for a person requires the right person," she echoed back to him. 

 

He put his hand on her knee, "Ah, oui, ma cherie.  But you have not even allowed yourself to consider if the right person is here, in front of you."

 

She looked at him, still smiling indulgently.  Had she not considered it?  Chategris was not unpleasant to look at, as far as mutants went.  He was witty, and he could be kind when he wanted to, when he felt it would benefit him.  He had always been kind to her, even when they fought.  He had reason to be kind to her, she could do what no one else he knew could, or would, do.  If he had felt she was of no use to him, all those years ago when he emerged from the shadows near her haunted warehouse, she would not have survived the encounter.  She was only as good as her usefulness, and when that wore out, so would she.  She hadn't felt an attraction, not a real attraction, to any mutant she'd met.   Or human for that matter.  Of course, her pick of humans was not ideal, but then neither was her pick of mutants.  A crazy homeless man, or a gang member?

 

"I have many people in front of me, Chategris," she said.  "That is a lot of consider." 

 

The playful smile disappeared from his face for a moment, before being replaced by his predatory one.  "La Phenix is in want of nothing, eh?" he repeated the words she had used to so many of her patients, so many times before, "she has everything she needs."

 

"Oui, mon ami," she said in French, "You are my friend," she kept her voice calm, and put her hand on his paw.  "You give mutants in this city a place to live.  You give them a place to belong to.  You give them food, and shelter, and people to be with.  You give them a strong leader, and a better life than they would be able to have otherwise."  She looked at him kindly, and felt that warm connection with him again, as she did with her teammates in her youth.  "I am glad to be your friend."

 

"Mon amie," he said.  "Oui, ma Phenix.  Mon amie."

 

***

 

Medusa draped herself over the rigging of the water tank on the top of one of the buildings in NYC, her head at the same level as Razz, who leaned against the metal bar with a hand resting lightly in Medusa's body.  "Why would these aliens have an army of ninjas?" Razz asked.  "Why not just have soldiers?"

 

Medusa laughed, "We asked the same question.  We don't know."

 

"Why do they want to take over Earth?  Why do they need mutants and mutagen to do that?"

 

"I don't know," Medusa said again.  "That's just what that investigator told us."

 

"How do you know he can be trusted?" Razz asked, crossing his arms.

 

"Because he helped us kill Kraang?" Medusa said dryly.  "When my mother was alone with him in his apartment he didn't turn her into a giant, anthropomorphic crab?"

 

Razz shook his head.  "This is all crazy!"

 

"This is crazy?" Medusa chuckled again.  "A giant snake and giant lizard are talking to each other about an alien invasion on a roof.  How is that crazy?"

 

Razz smiled.  "Oh yeah," if his eyes weren't completely black, he'd have rolled them.  "not crazy,  at all."

 

"What's really crazy," said Medusa, "is that we have no idea how we're going to stop them."  She looked at Razz with a worried expression.  "We don't know if anyone else is even fighting them.  Mama says that she hasn't met anyone on her clinics who has said anything about the aliens.  And we already know where Chategris stands."

 

"Chategris is never going to be a freedom fighter, Medusa," Razz said.

 

"I know..." Medusa looked away from to the cityscape off in the distance, the sun setting slowly over the buildings.  "I feel like it is only us four against all of them."

 

"You know you have allies," Razz said gently, taking her by the chin to look her in the eyes.  "You know you're not alone."

 

"It just feels that way," she said.

"I know we can't do much," he told her, "but Crevan and I do what we can."

 

"I know you do," her voice was soft and she smiled.

 

***

 

Aries held Myra in his lap, and threw stone absent-mindedly into the seat of one of the go-carts in the parking lot of the bay.   "You've been awfully quiet, Aries," Myra said, twirling the wool on his arm into a curl.

 

"I don't have much to say," he say distantly, kissing her lightly on the head.

 

"That's not like you," she snuggled into his chest, wiggling in all the right places.

 

He chuckled at her movement.  "I just get worried about my brother and sister," he muttered.  "And my mother."

 

"They can all take care of themselves," she said.  "Chategris has offered and offered to have the four of you live here.  I've heard him tell the Phoenix.  She keeps saying no."

 

"We wouldn't make a good match here," Aries answered, throwing another rock.

 

"Why?  This is a good place, Aries."  She twisted and stroked his cheek, her teeth nibbled at his neck.  "You would do fine here," her breath was soft against his skin.  "You could come by yourself, you could stay with me."

 

He pulled her away from him so he could look her in the eye.  "Why would I come and stay in a room full of beds of other people when I have my own bed, in my own room, with my own privacy?"

 

She blinked at him, and opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

 

"No answer to that, eh?"  He laughed and kissed her open mouth, "My family needs me."

 

"If they didn't go roving around the city trying to find aliens," she said in irritation, "they wouldn't need you."

 

"I like roving around the city with them," he said. 

 

"Roving around the city had you gone for almost a month, because your mother and sister couldn't fend for themselves," she said hotly.

 

Aries looked at her intently, his face serious.  "You saw what those ninjas did to the Grey Cats," he said.  "That is what they did to my mother and sister.  My mother, who is the size of a freaking mouse, had her ribs broken."

 

Myra took a deep breath, and licked her lips, "I'm not saying she didn't break her ribs, or that she didn't need help," she said sweetly.  "I'm just saying, if you didn't rove the city looking for aliens, then this wouldn't have happened."

 

"If we didn't rove the city looking for aliens, who would stop the aliens?" he countered.

 

She rolled her eyes, but didn't answer.

 

"It makes me feel good to be a superhero," he told her.

 

Myra laughed this time.  "I can make you feel better than being a superhero does," she promised.

 

***

 

 Arcos watched the sun set, and the sky become darker, before setting off over the rooftops to Greenwich Village.  While The Village had a thriving night life, its alleyways and backways were empty except for those who plied their trades in the dark.  He would find a lack of humans and a plethora of art supplies, both of which were a good thing.

 

Being alone was something that was rare and precious in Arcos' life, and something he didn't normally desire.  He was fine being with his brother, or his mother, or his sister, or even at the cargo bay with the Grey Cats.  He could be with others and still be alone in his thoughts.  But every once in a while, he wanted to be with no one, with just himself and the city.

 

I wonder if this is why Mama wants to go to clinic by herself, he thought.  So she can be alone on the journey there and back.

 

Jumping rooftops as the city descended into nighttime, the air became cold from the autumn crispness.  There was no one up here by the birds, and above him the stars.  Being as large as he was, it was just as rare that he felt small, as it was that he could be truly alone.  Looking up at the sky, so that he could see nothing else but the dark and stars, he felt insignificant and tiny.  Like a drop of water to the ocean, he thought.

 

He came to The Village and stopped on top of one of the buildings.  Occasionally a human would be up there, painting or drawing in the night, also seeking aloneness and the expansive sky.  Tonight there was no one on the rooftops.  He stopped above a favorite dumpster, where he always got lucky with something, and waited for the few humans that would have been able to see him from the street to move on their way. 

 

He had had trouble getting his mother's injuries out of his head.  Medusa had healed quickly, and didn't need the two days of sleep that the Phoenix had forcibly prescribed.  What worried him was the Phoenix's injuries.  It never occurred to him that she could be hurt in such a way that would render her inoperative.  She had barely been able to move from the couch to the toilet for a week, and the second week was only a little better.  He could see his mother almost in tears from the 'physical therapy' that prescribed herself, to try to keep her muscles limber.  He had seen her recover slowly from, what he'd been told, was only one kick to the side by the red masked turtle.

 

One kick to the side had rendered her unable to do anything for two weeks, and barely able to do anything else for two more. 

 

She had not been out to clinic for over a month, the longest stretch he could ever remember her staying home, even in the dead of winter when it was below freezing outside.  All because of one kick to her side. 

 

He had always marveled at his mother's size, or lack thereof, and how she performed the tasks that she did.  She was a tiny thing, golden and bright, but she was not a mutant.   Any mutant he'd ever met could overpower her in a fight if she could not dance out of their grasp.  He recalled his fight with the blue masked turtle.  The force that he had with the swing of those swords, or his punches or kicks, despite his size, were something that the huge Arcos himself had to brace for.    He had taken several hits in the fight, and every parry with his sledgehammer had a power behind it to keep the curved swords at bay.  Even Aries had complained that the several knocks on his hard head had given him a headache.  His mother was not a poor fighter, despite her being the weakest link of the four of them.  She did her job well, especially from a distance, her slingshot was deadly accurate, and the energy behind it could have easily rivaled that of a gun, he would wager.  But when she'd fought that turtle, she hadn't had the room to use the slingshot, and he had almost killed her.  All with one kick.

 

What was most disturbing to him, however, the one that all the other thoughts stemmed from was the thought, What if she'd been knocked unconscious?  How would she have healed anyone?  He had no idea who he would be able to go to if something happened to her, their only doctor, or she wasn't able to instruct him or someone else on what to do.  The Grey Cats would be no help, they called on her for their help.  None of the mutants in the city could help, for the same reason.  Those that could help, he was sure there must be some out there, didn't come into contact with them, because they didn't need to.  They could doctor themselves.  If something happened to his mother, they would have no one to patch them up, not one to nurse them, no one to heal them. 

 

He went down to the dumpster, and began rummaging through it, finding many half-filled tubes of oil paints, used canvases, and even a set of brushes that were in good condition.  Turpentine, a tin can, and an old, broken easel completed the set.  He made two trips to the dumpster, carrying his materials to another building top, his arms full and his head full.  He set up the broken easel against the wall of the access door, used the back of a used canvas for a palette, poured the turpentine in the cup, chose a relatively flat, light colored painting, and began to paint in the dim light.

 

He painted the cityscape as he saw it from where he was.  The sky was dark, with a splatter of stars, the light of the moon illuminating the buildings.  He used hues of yellow for the lights that shone through the windows of the buildings, glowing warmly compared to the cold light of the moon.  In the sky, emerging from the moon, and the stars, and the clouds, he painted an ethereal snake, a ram, and bear running across the night.   Then, from behind, he began to paint, in faint yellows, oranges, and reds, a firebird, lighting up the city like the rising sun.

 

Before he was done, he heard the click of the access door to the roof opening.  He ran to the opposite side of the door, staying in the shadows.  A man in a jacket and toboggan came out and looked around confused.  "Hey, Martha!" he called down the open door, "I told you there was someone up here!  They left a bunch of..." he paused, "paint stuff."  He went over to the painting that Arcos was working on, and cocked his head to the side, then the other side, looking at it.  "Not bad," he muttered, taking it off of the easel, and carrying it back down the stairs, closing the access door behind him.

 


	25. Chapter 25

She was holding Ailurosa in her arms, her warm, furry body curled up against her as they lay in the bed together.  They were crying, and Crevan was with them in bed, but she couldn’t see him anywhere.  She only had the knowledge he was there, because she could hear his sobs, which she had become so familiar with when Ailurosa had died.

“You didn’t expect me to stay forever, did you?” Ailurosa sobbed into her mother’s shoulder.  “I love him, and he loves me.”

“Of course you’re leaving,” Phoenix said, although that wasn’t how she felt at all.  She felt Crevan’s body now, against her back, his paws wrapping around her shoulders as they had when Ailurosa had died.  She didn’t understand why they were leaving.  Why did they have to leave?  There was no reason for anything to change.  Look, she wanted to say, there is even enough room in my bed for you both, so there is no reason to leave.  But all her mouth would say is “Of course you’re leaving.”

Then she alone in the kitchen, her front and back cold from the sudden loss of body heat.  Aries stood in front of her, a stretched out 15 year old, his horns too big for his head, and his head too big for his body, and his legs too long for his torso.  His eyes were red with anger, and his head was lowered dangerously.  Oh, I remember this happening, thought a part of Phoenix’s mind, this was right before he lost his virginity.  The teenager began to run at her, and she moved out of the way like a matador. 

Then he was calm, standing up and smiling, becoming a different person.  She knew instantly he’d slept with a girl, she didn’t know who, though she could guess.  It was as if all of the testosterone that was making him so angry for the past three years had dissipated with the introduction of a very adult activity that she felt he was nowhere near adult enough for.

“You didn’t think you could stop me, did you?” he said, his face in a void smile.  “You can’t expect me to stay here forever.”

She shook her head, and even though her mind wanted to say something else, her mouth said, “Of course you’re leaving.”

“There is nothing you can offer me here, Mother,” he said.   “You are old.  You are weak.  You are not even woman enough to accept a man who offers you whatever you ask for.”  The room about her began to fade into a fine, white mist, almost the same color as Aries’ wool.  “You aren’t even woman enough to ask for anything.  You are a statue, like one of your gymnastics trophies, frozen in place.  How could you ever expect me to stay here?”

“I didn’t…” she stammered. “I didn’t think…”

“Are you surprised that Ailurosa left us?”   Aries said, his vacant smile replaced by the red eyes of earlier.   He pointed one of his thick fingers at her.  “She left us because of you!”

“No!”  Phoenix sat up in her bed, her heart thumping, sweat on her brow.  The air around her was chilly, she could see her breath in pale light of the moon shining in the window.  She shook her head to get the remaining fuzziness of the bad dream out of it, then laid back down on her pillow with a soft, “thmmp” and let out a deep sigh.  This was the third night in a row she’d had a similar nightmare.  Nightmares were a part of her sleep cycle, they ran in waves.  She would have a stretch of them, and then a stretch of peaceful sleep. The conversation she had with Chategris earlier shook her up the more she thought about it.     She had not seriously considered partnering up with anyone, except for Chategris himself, and she had no desire to do so.  She had no desire to go out and find someone.  She was fine, with her warehouse, with her garden, with her clinics, with her children.

It was the last thought, the dearest of all of her loves, that wrenched guilt up from up the bottom of her being and pulled at her heart strings.  Had they considered those in front of them?  She knew that while she knew most of their secrets and their doings, she didn’t know all of them.  She shouldn’t know all of them, she told herself, even though she wanted to know.   Were they fine with their warehouse, with their garden, with their crime-fighting, with her?  Did they want to find a partner, someone to spend the rest of their lives with, lives that would long outlast hers?

Why wouldn’t they? She derided herself.  Did they not have the same desires that everyone else had?  Just because they were mutants didn’t mean they didn’t want families of their own, or their own spaces, or their own lives.

She hadn’t thought about this for a long time.   Ailurosa was the only one who had come close to having a stable relationship, and she was so young.  Subconsciously she had made the assumption that any pairing that might occur between her children and someone else would automatically be brought here to the warehouse, not having her children go away.  Perhaps it was Crevan’s long visit after Ailurosa’s death, and his occasional visits, still, just to say hello or bring a gift he found that he thought she’d enjoy, that had cemented that thought in her mind.  But none of her children had ever “brought someone home.”

She knew Arcos was not in a relationship, though if he engaged in relations when he wasn’t in one, she didn’t know.  He had gotten annoyed at all the girls he’d engaged in emotionally, and the relationships didn’t last very long. He hadn’t met someone whom he connected with, and Phoenix could certainly empathize with that.

Aries’ relationships did not last long either, when he had them, though for a totally different reason.  There was a reason why non-mutated rams have the reputation they do, and that particular trait seemed to have transferred to her middle child.  She knew he had a string of women behind him, not an uncommon occurrence within the Grey Cats.  She wished he used more discretion when he picked his string, but his pickings weren’t too good from the pool he had to choose from anyway.  He had been with Myra for quite for a while, perhaps he was in an actual relationship with her.  She had spoken with Myra on several occasions, healed her on even more, and tied to be as kind to her as she tried to be with everyone else.  She seemed alright, if manipulative.  However, she wasn’t any more manipulative than many of the other women in the Grey Cats, so Phoenix had never held that against her.  But Aries had never brought her to the warehouse.  Did he not plan on bringing his woman to the warehouse?  Was his plan to join his woman where she was?

Medusa had never indicated that had engaged in any sort of activity with anyone, Phoenix was at a total loss as to what was going on with her daughter.  She had a strong suspicion that something was going on with Razz, but she wasn’t sure what, and she wasn’t sure at what emotional, or physical, level.  Unlike her other three, she had never come to her with questions about liking someone, or someone liking her.  Perhaps her brothers had prepped her, so she didn’t feel the need to come to her mother.  Perhaps the need hasn’t presented itself, she consoled herself.

She slept fitfully for the rest of the night, her mind running with questions when she was awake.  Would they get ‘married’ when they decided to partner up with someone, or just be with them and that be it?  How, exactly could they get married?  How would they have a family if they wanted one?  In all of her years, she’d never met a pregnant mutant, so she expected that something with the genetics made it not possible to reproduce.  Would they join the Grey Cats, be gang members under Chategris’ command?  She couldn’t see any of them doing that, not even Aires, but doubt crept into her heart. 

She had not had “a talk” with them for years, the last one being an intimate one with Aires and Arcos about the workings of female parts and their male equivalents.  But at breakfast that morning, herbed-oatmeal bowls in front of each of them, she said, “You know, that if you ever want to bring someone home, or to live with us or something, you can, right?”

The three of them looked at her as if she had crabs coming out of her nostrils.

***

The four of them pulled up the dead and dying annuals in her medicinal garden, scattering the seeds they left on their flower heads to overwinter and sprout in the spring.  The pulled up material went into the compost pile, and anything woody went into the pile that was going to carry up to the warehouse to burn.  They already started fires in the evenings, the weather was getting very chilly, and they had to prepare her perennial plants to survive the cold of the winter.  Aires turned the compost pile with a salvaged pitchfork, mixing in the browns and the greens to get a good heat going to break down the material.

It was a gray day, one of those days that threaten rain, but the rain never arrives.  What little sun there was blocked by a cloud, and Phoenix looked up to see if the rain was actually keeping its promise.

It wasn’t a cloud that blocked the sun.  It was…she didn’t know what it was.  It was a great metal blimpy-thing.  But she recognized the sickening-pink color that the lights on it strobed.

“Maaammmmaaa,” Medusa drawled out, pointing up.

“I see it, Curly Que,” she called, pointing at the great, round, ship that descended slowly toward the ground somewhere in the middle of New York City.

They watched it awed silence, it was huge, and imposing.  Slowly, little parts of it began to separate from it, and then shoot down toward the ground.   All of them jumped

Medusa was up the rope in a flash, her brothers and mother not far behind.  By the time Phoenix had gotten up to the window, Medusa had turned on the TV and Arcos was dialing into a station on the radio, both in an attempt to get some information.   Arcos found the news first, and Medusa turned off the television.

“The Technodrome is releasing, what looks like big pink and gray bubbles.  They’re pods.  The pods are everywhere, Ted,” said the female reporter, “and…and robots are coming out of them.  They snatching people up!!”  The transmission stopped and became static.

“We have to get to the cargo bay,” Aries cried

“No,” Phoenix said, “we need to go into the city.  Those are alien…pods!

Medusa was down the stairs before Aires could answer, Arcos right behind her.  They ran to the back of the warehouse, and jumped in the fancy car.  It was much faster than the crime fighting car.  With Medusa behind the wheel, they sped out of the garage bay at the bottom of the warehouse, and toward the center of the city.

People were in pandemonium.  They ran through the streets screaming, smoke muddied the air, making it hard to see things clearly.  Robot-riding Kraang came out of the pods that had landed, and began grabbing the first living thing they could grab, humans, dogs, cats, and threw them in the pod.  The pods closed, and began to ascend to the ship in the sky.  The robots then began shooting.

Medusa stopped the car, it skidded to the side, and parked perfectly in an unoccupied space at the sidewalk.  “Oh yeah,” she bragged, as she twisted and jumped out of the sunroof.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Phoenix asked, climbing out of the door.

“I’m a natural,” she called, before darting at the nearest Kraang and wrapping herself around it in a crushing embrace, while snapping her whip at one that aimed a gun at her and was preparing to shoot.  It wrapped around its wrist, and a hard pull from her snapped off its hand, and sending its gun skittering across the asphalt.  She released the one she was coiled around, it fell the ground, the Kraang inside not even visible with the deformation of the metal body.  She darted to another one that had a large dog in its arms.

Arcos and Aries swung their weapons with precision, neither of them lifting the sledgehammer or axe above their heads.  They made a sweeping motion with each one, connecting with a Kraang in the robots more often than not.  Pink sludge from the Kraangs’ splattered over the young mutants, and was slung about them like silly string.

Phoenix whipped out her slingshot, loaded it with two bullets, and let them fly.  They whizzed through the air, hitting a Kraang nestled in the stomach of a robot.  The robot fell forward.  She turned to another one, it had picked up a little girl and was carrying her to a pod.  She put her slingshot away, and leapt at it with her knife drawn.  She landed on its back, and stabbed at its head.  Her hand jarred as it made contact with the metal and only made a small dent.  It let go of the girl with only one hand, and reached over its head and grabbed her collar.  It flipped her over, and held her off the ground, continuing toward the pod.

The little girl began to scream louder than she had before.  Phoenix couldn’t reach the Kraang with her arms.  She tried to kick it, but her legs were too short.  The pod came closer and closer, and she began to scream along with the little girl.  “Help!!”

All three of her children looked in her direction, but each was engaged in their own fight.  The Kraangbot threw both her and the little girl into the pod, and the pink tinged top began to close.  Arcos swung his sledgehammer with such force that three of the Kraang went flying, and he ran on all fours, his hammer in his mouth, toward the pod.  The Kraang that had grabbed Phoenix and the little girl stood in his way, but he jumped over it, to get to the pod.  The pod closed just as he reached it.

“Mama!” Arcos cried, his paws against the transparent top of the pod.  It began to lift off, and he looked around frantically trying to stop it.  Then he was grabbed from behind by the Kraangbot he’d jumped.

He flexed his arms, breaking the arms off of the Kraangbot.  He then turned, and with his paw closed, punched the Kraang in the torso.  The robot went tumbling over the asphalt, and crashed into a garbage can, still.

He looked up and saw the pod containing his mother pick up speed, and then disappear in the swarm of other pods in the sky.

He turned back to the few Kraang that were left, there were three that were not immediately occupied by his brother and sister.  With a deafening roar, his eyes clouding with fury, he drew his sledgehammer and began banging the nearest Kraang to pieces.  The head flew off, the arms were knocked off, one of the legs was bent horribly before his sledgehammer squished the pink brain-like blob inside its torso.   

With a backward swing, he tore the arm off of another one.  Twisting, with a heft he decapitated it, and then as it fell on its back, he stepped on the Kraang inside of it.

The third one made a squeaking nose and turned to run away.  Arcos leapt after it, landing on all fours, and with his mouth gripped onto its back on both sides.  He swung his head back and forth voraciously, and the Kraang on the inside fell out.  It began to skitter away, its tentacles waving as it did.  Arcos elevated his hammer, and brought it down hard on the Kraang, which smooshed flat on the concrete sidewalk.

He turned to help his brother and sister, but they had defeated their opponents, and were staring at him with their mouths hanging open.  “What?” he snarled.

“You did that in, like, three seconds…” Aries said quietly.

“What do we do now?” Medusa asked, her shocked expression turning concerning.

Arcos looked up at the Technodrome and then at a landing set of pods farther away.  “We go and stop as many of those pods as we can,” he said.


	26. Chapter 26

“No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO!!”  Phoenix banged her fists on the transparent top of the pod.  She could vaguely hear screaming coming from somewhere else, but the sound of the blood in her ears, and her own voice made it hard to determine where the screaming was coming from.

 

She couldn’t go back there, she couldn’t go back there, she couldn’t go back there. Fear made her eyes feel as if they were about to pop out of her head, and her heart thumped like it was going to jump out of her chest.  She couldn’t let the aliens get a hold of her again.  She didn’t know why, she couldn’t remember why, but she couldn’t do it.  She would rather die than let them touch her again.

 

She turned in a panic, looking for another way out of the pod as it ascended toward the spaceship.  It was then than the screaming that was coming outside of her breached her consciousness.  She looked down and was surprised to find the little girl whom she’d been trying to save in the pod with her.

 

She was just sitting on the ground, hugging her knees, and screaming in as long as a breath she could get, taking in another deep breath and then screaming again.  Phoenix felt suddenly ashamed of herself for screaming, forgetting the little girl was there.  You’re supposed to be a superhero, Phoenix, she told herself.  Start acting like one.

 

Phoenix bent down to the little girl, and put her hands on her shoulders.  “Shush,” she said gently, trying to rock her out of her panic.  The girl did not shush, in fact the girl got louder as they entered a little space, a perfect size to fit a pod, and in a tunnel, lit with the sickening-pink light.  “Shush,” Phoenix’s own panic was beginning to rise again, as she saw the pods in front of her be sucked with bars, and then taken down to other corridors on the left and right.

 

The little girl did not shush.

 

Phoenix grabbed her and lifted her up, none too gently, and shook her.  “You must be quiet,” she cried.  When the girl seemed not to hear her, she did the only other thing she could think of; she pressed the girl’s mouth into her stomach, trying to cut off the air available to her to get to her stop.  The entire time, she bent over, “Shhhhh,” she said, “shhhh, sweet girl.  You must be quiet, or they will hear us, and if they hear us, we have no chance to get away.” 

 

The girl’s black hair was sleek, set in the five pony tales secured with bobbles about her head, in a style that had been all the rage for little black girls when Phoenix had been young.  What goes around, comes around, she thought to herself.  Her skin was the color of dark chocolate, and she smelled like cocoa butter.  She was wearing a pale blue dress, now smudged with dirt and grime from the streets of New York City.   “You must be quiet, sweet, you must be.”  The girl finally stopped screaming, whether because of her lack of air, or out of self-control, Phoenix wasn’t sure.

 

She peeled the girl off of her, the place in her stomach wet with snot and tears and hot breath.  She bent down to be on her girl’s face level.  “What’s your name, sweet?”

 

“Jayla,” the girl hiccupped.

 

“That’s a good name,” Phoenix said emphatically.  “I’m called The Phoenix, but you can call me whatever you like as long as it is respectful.”

 

The little girl nodded.

 

“We have to be quiet, and you have to do exactly what I say.  There are bad people who are taking us here, and we need to get away.”  She looked Jayla in the eyes, a beautiful dark brown, like baking chocolate.  “Do you understand?”

 

Jayla nodded.

 

The two of them jerked slightly as the pod closed into a dock. 

 

“I’m going to try and open the pod,” Phoenix said.  “Can you do exactly what I say, Jayla?”

 

“Yeah,” Jayla said.

 

“Unless I tell you otherwise,” Phoenix put on hand on the girl’s shoulder, “you stay on me like white on rice, you understand?”

 

Jayla nodded.

 

“Now, we have to figure out a way to get out of here.”  Phoenix turned to what she thought might be a control panel, and felt like sinking into the floor at the sight of it.  She couldn’t make heads nor tails of anything.

 

“Lady,” said Jayla.

 

“Yes, Jayla,” Phoenix asked, pressing a few buttons gently to try and give herself some fortitude to do something more forceful.

 

Jayla pulled on her top, “Lady!” her voice was panicked.

 

Phoenix looked up and followed the girl’s arm to where she was pointing.  Outside of the window were two spaceship-riding brains flying towards them.  Phoenix let out a noise that sounded something in-between a curse and a cry for help.  She grabbed Jayla to her, and hissed, “Whatever you do, do not let go of me.”

 

Jayla began to cry softly, but she said, “Ok, Lady.”

 

Phoenix had to blink over and over again to keep her vision clear as the Kraang approached.  They stretched out their tentacles, and metal probes came out of the little spaceships they rode.  One of them pressed a button on the side of the wall, and the top of the pod opened.

 

“Get on my back,” Phoenix commanded softly, helping Jayla from her breast where she’d been holding her to her back.   “And hold on.”

 

The other on approached them as the top slid open.   It made a chittering noise, and as soon as it was far enough away from its companion at the control panel, Phoenix drew her knife, and leapt at it.  To her surprise, she overshot it, her jump much slower in the air and taking her farther than she anticipated.  She came close enough to the one that was at the controls, to grab one of its metal rods and swing herself up onto it. 

 

She felt no jarring when she came down on top of the Kraang, only the slight bump of Jayla’s feet against her hips.  She jabbed her knife straight down into the Kraang’s head, or what would have been its head had it anything else other than a brain and eyes.  Pink goo squished up into her face, so she had to spit to make sure it didn’t get in her mouth.  She wiped her eyes off, and saw the other Kraang coming at her with a long pole extended from its spaceship, a pink lightening sparking from it.

 

A vivid picture came to her, of the lizard in the floating beaker so long ago, his frill out, his mouth open in a scream, the poles with the pink lightening trying to shock him the resistance out of him.  “Oh no,” she muttered, “you are not touching me with that.” 

 

She leapt again, as if she didn’t have Jayla on her back, and she landed on the spaceship-riding Kraang lightly, easily avoiding the pole.  Another strike downward, a twist, and a slash, and she was once again covered with warm, pink, goo.

 

“Are you alright, Jayla?” she asked a little too loudly, her voice echoed.

 

“Yeah, Lady,” she said, her face buried in Phoenix’s neck.  “I’m OK.”  A moment later she felt the girl gag against her skin.

 

The same nauseous feeling came to Phoenix also, and she realized the spaceship-riding Kraang was falling.  Looking down, it was a long, long fall, even if it wasn’t falling very fast.  She jumped to the first hole in the wall that she saw, and when she gently landed, she saw it was a tunnel of some sort.

 

“Lady,” Jayla moaned, “I think I’m gonna puke.”

 

“That’s alright, honey,” Phoenix tried to sound as calm as she possibly could.  She was just cleaning house, walking to the grocery store, returning books from the library...what was it normal people did to be calm nowadays?  “I feel like I am too.”

 

She readjust Jayla on her back, and began to make her way through the tunnel.  “The gravity is different here,” she muttered.  “I wonder if they need a different gravity than we do…”  She wasn’t floating as if in 0G, but her light jumps carried her quite a ways.  It was a shame she felt like she was going to vomit at any minute, because carrying the little girl on her back, and jumping were almost effortless.

 

They heard a girl’s high pitched scream come from somewhere in the distance.

 

“Are we going to die?” Jayla whispered.

 

“Not if I can help it,” Phoenix whispered back.

 

As they walked through the tunnel, they could hear clinks and clunks and chittereings coming from everywhere.   Then, another high pitched scream, coming from the same girl.

 

Phoenix broke out into a run, “Time for us to find a way out of here.”

 

The end of the tunnel came before she could slow her speed, and being unable to stop with the lesser gravity, she simply slid out of the tunnel, into a chute, and began to fall.  Jayla gagged against her shoulder again, and Phoenix gagged right after her.  She reached for the sides for chute, but they were too far away.  Then, with a great lurch, she was thrown to the side of the chute, and the entire space shifted sideways, so she was now sliding instead of falling. She heard Jayla let out of a ‘ummph” she hit the wall. 

 

“Don’t let go!” Phoenix yelled.  She kicked as soon as she saw an opening in the shoot, and scrambled to grab a handhold so she wouldn’t slide out of it.  1G was back now, she could feel the strain on her arms and shoulders as Jayla clung to her.  Like a rock climber, she climbed the tunnel, and then the entire structure fell forward, and she was sliding down the tunnel again, face first, with nothing to break her fall.

 

She twisted, so both her legs and arms were facing downward, Jayla on her back protected, hopefully, by the rest of her body.  When she finally landed at the end of the tunnel, it was against an open pod, in a little bay like the one she and Jayla had come out of.

 

“We’re in the same place!” Jayla cried.

 

“No,” Phoenix said firmly.  She couldn’t believe they were in the same place.  “It’s another pod.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, the structure lurched again, this time with a jerk that threw their heads back, cracking their skulls against each other.

 

Jayla cried out in pain, and Phoenix had to fight back tears.  “That hurt,” she said.

 

“Yes,” Jayla said with a sniff.

 

Another small jerk made it clear that they were indeed in 1G, Phoenix put her arms out to keep from hitting the wall.  She began to hear a bubbling noise that sounded suspiciously like water glugging up from somewhere.

 

The Technodrome had crashed into the ocean, she was sure of it.  And they were stuck in here, with nowhere to go.”

 

 _We’re in the same place,_ the unbidden thought echoed Jayla’s words and tone exactly.  _We’re in the same place._

 

If they were in the same place—they could get out the same way!

 

She turned to the chute that the pod had come through to get to the little docking bay and began climbing it.  Her shoulders ached with Jayla’s weight, but she kept chanting, “Don’t let go, baby, don’t let go.”  The girl’s breath was hot and wet in her shoulder, and the smell of cocoa butter and vanilla mixed with the acrid smell of chemicals burning.  Finally coming to the end of the chute, she saw the large entry way, where all of the pods had entered the Technodrome, and she let out groan.  It was facing upward.  She would have to climb some more.

 

She took a deep breath.  “You OK back there?” she asked.

 

Jayla picked up her head.  “Yeah,” she said.  Then she took a breath in, “Did your daddy burn your face with a cigar?”

 

“What?”  Phoenix reached up and began climbing toward the light at the end of the tunnel, not unaware of the irony of that fact.

“You got a cigar burn on your head,” she felt the little girl’s soft hand stroke her temple.

 

She had forgotten she had the scar there, or the matching ones on the other parts of her body.  As she thought a reply, her heart sank.  _Did your daddy burn your face with a cigar?_   “No,” she answered.  “I was burned by the aliens.”  After a moment of quiet she asked, “Did your daddy burn you?”

 

“No,” Jayla’s face was buried in Phoenix’s neck again.  “But my daddy burned my brother’s arm with a cigarette.”

 

“He did?” Phoenix tried to make her voice casual.

 

“Yeah, he didn’t burn me, though,” she replied.

 

“Are you going home to your daddy?”  Phoenix wasn’t sure why she asked the question.

 

“Nah,” Jayla said.  “He’s in jail now, for selling crank.”

 

Phoenix continued the climb up.  The pace was agonizingly slow, but the talk was helping her.  The man goes to jail for selling methamphetamine, she thought, not for burning his son with a cigar.  And they call my children monsters!  “What about your mama?” she asked. 

 

“I don’t know where she is,” Jayla said.  “My grandma takes care of us now.  Are you a mama?”

 

“I am,” Phoenix said.  “I had five children, but now I only have three.”  That knowledge couldn’t have been worse than anything this little girl had gone through.

 

“Two of them got killed?”

 

“Yes,” she answered.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jayla said.  The girl on her back couldn’t have been more than 5, and here she was, saying she was sorry for Phoenix’s loss.

 

“I am too, Jayla,” she said.  “And I am sorry your daddy burned your brother.”

 

“You seem like a good mama,” Jayla said. 

 

The reply brought tears to Phoenix’s eyes, and she climbed upward, so slowly.  Her neck ached, her jaw ached, her shoulders ached, her thighs ached and now her eyes ached with her attempt to hold back tears.  “Thank you,” she said. “I hope I am.”  Then, without thinking, she added, “Can you promise me something?”

 

“Sure,” said Jayla into her neck.

 

“When you’re a mama,” Phoenix said, “you will be a good mama to your children, no matter where your children come from.”

 

Jayla said nothing for a while, then answered, “You mean, like my grandma is kind of my mama now, even though we came from her son?”

“Yes,” Phoenix replied.

 

“I promise,” Jayla’s voice was quiet and solemn.

 

“Good girl.”

 

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Phoenix got to the top of the chute.  Climbing up into the sunshine, she squinted at the bright light.  Once her eyes adjusted, she saw pods floating in the water, with people in them calling to one another. 

 

“Can you swim, Jayla?”

 

“I sure can!”  Jayla wiggled, and Phoenix put her down.

 

“We are going to swim to that pod, right over there, OK?  Can you do that?”

 

“Yep!” 

 

Without another word, Jayla jumped in the water and began swimming expertly to the pod.  When they got it, without hesitation, the three people in it stretched their hands out to help haul them up.

 

 

“You OK?” asked a man the pod, once they’d gotten in.

 

“I’m fine,” Phoenix said.

 

“Yeah,” Jayla said as the same time.

 

“Are any of you hurt?” Phoenix asked, looking at each of them with her soft eyes, to see if she could detect any smudges in their glows.

 

“No,” they answered.  “Just a bit banged up from being thrown in this thing.”

 

Phoenix nodded and sat down drawing Jayla into her lap.  The rest of the people fell silent, and Phoenix buried her head in Jayla’s hair.

 

“My grandma is going to be mad my hair got wet,” she said quietly.

 

Phoenix laughed.  “I don’t think so, sweet.  She’ll be glad that you’re still here, with all of your hair in place.  She can always perm your hair again.”

 

Jayla twisted in Phoenix’s lap, and put her arms around her neck.  Phoenix felt a warm lump swell in her stomach and rise into her chest.  She had forgotten how good it felt to have a little child in her lap, hugging her for warmth and comfort.  She inhaled her hair again, reminding her so much of Elisabetta’s, of Elisabetta’s cousins, of any of Stephane’s female relatives, Stephane who had given her up after four months—No!  She was not going to think about that!  She was going to enjoy the smell of cocoa butter and vanilla mixed with salt water, and the warmth of child-breath on her chest, and the warm little body pressed up against her.  Several ties she had to loosen her arms about Jayla, she held the girl so tight, so was afraid of crushing her.

A Coast Guard boat finally came to pick them up, and whizzed them back to shore, the wind biting into every inch of flesh on their bodies.  They were all lead to ambulances, which checked their vital signs, covered them with itchy wool blankets, and gave them a cup of hot cocoa to warm them up.

 

Phoenix kept her arm about Jayla as they each drank.  She closed her eyes with each sip, and noticed Jayla looking at her when she opened them.  “You don’t get chocolate much, do you?” she asked.

 

“No,” Phoenix answered.  “It is a rare treat.”

 

“It is for me too, Lady,” the little girl answered.  Jayla then closed her own eyes, and took a sip of the hot liquid, and Phoenix had to smile.

 

Eventually a police officer made his way over to them to “process them.”  “Is this your daughter?” the officer asked, looking at the girl dubiously.

 

Phoenix paused before answering, she could have been her daughter.  Her Elisabetta had skin lighter than Jayla’s and hair more blonde, but she smelled of cocoa butter and vanilla, just like Jayla did.  She had the same dark brown eyes, and warm little body that would press against her.

 

“No, she’s not my mother,” Jayla answered for her.  “But she saved me.”

 

The officer took Jayla’s information, and then took her from Phoenix.  She felt the cold spot left by the little girl intently.  “Stay here, and I’ll be back to process you,” he said kindly.

 

Phoenix nodded.

 

“Bye, Lady,” Jayla waved.

 

“Bye Jayla,” Phoenix waved back.  “Be good!”

 

“I will!”

 

She watched the officer walk off, holding back her tears.  She took the last swig of her hot chocolate, and then hopped off the edge of the ambulance, and walked away from the shore, back to the world where little girls did not exist, and the people surrounding her did not smell of cocoa butter and vanilla.  Back to her own grown up children, who at one time she had held just as she did Jayla.

 


	27. Chapter 27

Let Season 2 begin!

###

 

The winter came to New York City, and dojos, aliens, pods, memories of little girls, and everything else was put aside for caring for mutants and homeless people at danger of dying from cold-related injuries.

 

Feet and hands were the most common of her patients’ complaints, and she wracked her brain for a way to fix it.  Most of the mutants she dealt with could not find shoes that would anywhere near fit them.  She often resorted to telling them to wear grocery bags on their feet, stuffed with more grocery bags, or with newspaper, for insulation, a trick she'd learned from the many homeless people living in the streets.  She hated to see her patients walking around with bags on their feet and hands.  They are people, she would think angrily, they deserve shoes too!

 

While shopping one evening, she found an old crochet blanket, made of granny squares.  While she did not know how to crochet, the squares gave her an idea.

 

"Aries," she asked when she got home, the blanket slung over her shoulder, "could you make shoes out of squares?"

 

It was obviously his turn to keep Medusa warm.  She was wrapped around him, her head on his shoulder, a blanket wrapped around the two of them.  They sat by the fire in the drum, and Aries was turning slowly in circles, so that all of his sisters outer body could get some warmth from the flames.  "What do you mean?"

 

"If I could come up with sort of squares, could you make shoes?"

 

"Why don't we just shop for some shoes for you?" he asked.  "Why would you need to make shoes?"

 

She laid the blanket out of the window to air out, "Not for me," she said.  "For the mutants who are out there in the cold."

 

Aries smiled, looking at the blanket as she hung it.  "Oh, I see!  I bet I can come up with something."

 

It was only the next day when Aries presented her with a loom.  Made of wood, with nails as the weaving hooks, it was in the shape of a square, looking very much like a child’s band loom.  “Something like this?” he asked.

 

“Exactly like that!” she said.

 

So their main winter activity was making plarn, looping the grocery bags they found in their outings in the longs strips of yarn.  Then they each took turns weaving squares of plastic on the loom. Then they took turns going to the freezing third floor and ironing cloth onto one side of the plastic to make it more comfortable.  The smell was awful, and it had to be ironed by the open window so that they didn’t kill brain cells.  Each finished square was put into the medicine bags until they were bulging at the seams.

 

The amount of new mutants surprised Phoenix.  More and more often she saying, “I am called the Phoenix, but you can call me whatever you like, as long as it’s respectful.”  Many of the mutants were new to being mutants, having been humans or plants or animals not long ago.  They were pained with loneliness and many with hunger, and she ended up telling them about some of the easier pickings in dumpsters in the city.  She ended up telling each of them about an empty apartment building in one of the derelict parts of the city, and encouraged them to form a group, if for nothing else, to have a place to go and someone to be with.

 

It was at the apartment building that she went once every two weeks that winter.  Each time she went, there were more mutants there, with nothing but what they carried with them, which was often times…nothing.

 

A new mutant, a grotesque combination of something mammal and something plant, was her first patient, and it needed something for its feet.  With her plastic woven squares and the large needle that Aires had fashioned for her, and began to sew squares together to make slippers for it.  About two thirds of the denizens had similar slippers, and they had made two large looms, at her suggestion, to weave sleeping mats for themselves.  “It is better than sleeping on the concrete,” she had said, “that way you’re a little warmer.”

 

She could see an order start to form in the complex, an hierarchy that reminded her an awful lot of the Grey Cats.  Is this what happened when a group of people got together?  They automatically established a pecking order of survival of the fittest?  Did they just become violent with one another?  Or did that have something to do with the fact they were mutants, that many of them were crossed with animals that were violent by nature?  Had it been so long now, that she, fully human, didn’t know how humans acted any longer?

 

She taught them the tricks that she knew to keep warm, to get food, to store the food, and the basics of first aid, especially for the insects that arrived, so invariably seemed to always be at the bottom of the totem pole.  She left them with the salves and lotions and potions she could, and then wandered the city where ever the voice lead her to go.

 

 

The cold, and the drudge of work was getting to all of them.  They snapped at each other much more than normal, and Phoenix even had to grab Aries by the ear, and Medusa by the cheek to separate them from a fight at one point.  How Medusa had the body heat to move so fast, Phoenix wasn’t entirely sure.

 

“We’re going to the cargo bay,” she said.  “Arcos, carry Medusa.”  Then they were all out of the garden window, and onto the rooftops avoiding snow and ice as they went.

 

The cargo bay fared no better than the warehouse, save that there were more bodies to cuddle up with. Most of the people in the bay were cuddled with someone, or several someones, under blankets, or several blankets.  In a pile in the corner, the insect hybrids were in a big pile, with debris thrown on them.

 

 She found that Chategris was more than happy to share his loveseat and blanket with her.  She sat down next to him, but he put her on his lap.  She didn’t argue, but cuddled up to his body.

 

“Ah, ma Cherie,” he admonished.  “You are like ice!”  He put a paw over her ear that was not pressed against his chest. 

 

She began to shake slightly as her body warmed up, and she let out a contented sigh.  “Because the weather is icy!”

 

“That does not mean you need to be out in it,” he said in French.  He put his cheek on the top of her head.

 

His head was lovely and warm.  “How is that lot over there doing?” she indicated the pile of insects in the corner with a slight nod of her head. 

 

“They are fine,” Chategris told her.  “They move in and out, taking turns to be in the middle.”  As if sensing some sort of disapproval, he added, “When we get more blankets, I will give them some.”

 

“I take it, it has been too cold to be too naughty,” she said, making conversation.

 

“Non,” he purred, “it is just the right amount of cold to be naughty.”

 

She chuckled in spite of her herself.  “That isn’t what I meant.”

 

“Ah, you know I do not discuss business matter with you,” he replied in play admonishment.  “I do not wish to get into an ideological argument neither of us can win.”  When she said nothing in return, he continued, “Mais oui, it is much too cold.”  He shivered slightly, as if to emphasize his words.

 

She snuggled into him closer, relishing his body heat, and the feel of his fur under her cheek.  “There are people who are colder than us,” she reminded herself, “who have no one else to keep them warm.”

 

“Tell yourself that, ma Cherie,” he said, “if it makes you feel better.  I have noticed that it has never given me any extra warmth.”

 

 

Medusa had not left Arcos, her body was still wrapped around him like a trap.  He sat on pile of pillows on the floor, with Razz snuggled up to him and Medusa on one side Crevan on his other, and then Aries and Myra on the other side of Razz.  They all squished together, like an animal sandwich, their breath visible in the air.

 

“Good god, man,” Aries said to Razz, “you’re like a popsicle.”

 

“I don’t have a brother or sister wrap myself around,” Razz replied annoyed.

 

“You can wrap yourself around Crevan,” Aries said with a wink.

 

“No,” Crevan said through chattering teeth.  “Medusa’s got the right idea.  You’re warm, Arcos.  I need to come over to the haunted warehouse and sleep in your bed with you.”

 

“I’m in my bed,” Arcos replied.  “We’re all in my mother’s bed, where the air is warmest.”

 

“Plus someone has to tend the fire,” Medusa said.

 

“No one is tending it now,” Myra quipped. “You’re all here.”

 

“Hopefully we don’t go home to a warehouse on fire,” Aries said, pulling her closer.

 

Razz looked over at Chategris and the Phoenix speaking softly to each other in French.  She was curled up into the leader of the Grey Cats like a kitten, the only thing sticking out of the blanket and Chategris was her face.  “Can you three speak French?” Razz asked.

 

“What?” Aries gave him a quizzical look, and followed his gaze to his mother.  “You mean to ease drop on them?”

 

“We already tried that,” Arcos explained.  “They don’t talk about anything interesting.  Right now they’re talking about the cold.”

 

“So you do speak French,” Crevan pushed.

 

“A little,” Arcos said.  “It’s easier to understand than to speak.  And it’s easier to read than to understand someone talking.”

 

“But you speak enough of it to be able to eavesdrop on someone?” Razz’s voice was very quiet.

 

“If they’re speaking slowly enough,” Medusa said.  “And they aren’t using words that too big.”  There was a pause, and Medusa closed her third eyelid very slowly, and then opened it again.  “Why?”

 

Razz looked at Crevan, and they both shook their heads. 

 

“Oh no,” Aries, pressed into Razz, his voice a huff.  “You can’t ask questions like that, and gives looks like that and not tell us what’s going on.”

 

“Right now, there isn’t anything going on,” Crevan said quickly.  “We just want to have our bases covered in case there is.”

 

Aries huffed.

 

“So how’s the superhero business going?” Crevan shivered and snuggled closer to Arcos.

 

“What superhero business?” Aries replied.  “It’s freezing out.  We can barely keep warm now, and you think we’re going out being superheroes?”

 

“Besides,” Arcos interjected.  “No one is committing street crimes when the weather is like this.”

 

“How do you know?” Myra asked, her voice harsh.

 

“Have you committed any crimes lately?” Medusa had a slight hiss in her voice.

 

Razz hid a smile in Arcos’ shoulder.

 

Myra turned away petulantly.  “It’s too cold.”

 

“Exactly,” Arcos wiggled.  “Medusa, you’re squeezing me too hard.”

 

“Ah, you’re getting soft in your old age, Arcos,” Razz said.  “Used to be she never bothered you.”

 

“Breath into my shoulder again,” Arcos growled.  “It felt good.”

“I bet it feels good,” Myra chuckled, wiggling closer to Aries.  “Pretty pathetic when all you can get is a breath from a lizard.”

 

Razz and Medusa turned to look at her vindictively.

 

“Not everyone is a pervert, Myra,” Arcos muttered.

 

“I like her being a pervert,” Aries kissed her loudly on the lips.

 

“Like I said, not everyone is a pervert.”

 

“Have you all had any word about any of the aliens?” Medusa asked, steering the conversation away from a fight.

 

Razz, Crevan, and Myra all shook their heads.  “Not a peep,” Crevan said.  “They must hibernate in the winter.”

 

“I wouldn’t be surprised this winter,” Aries said.  “I hate it when the winters are like this.”

 

“No word of any ninjas, either,” Razz said, “Turtle, dog, fish, or otherwise.”

 

“Maybe they all hibernate too,” Myra said.  “I wish I could hibernate.” 

 

“Think of all the fun you’d miss,” Aries said lightly.  “You’d miss Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year…”

 

“When was the last time you celebrated any of those holidays?” Myra swat at him from under the blanket, getting a round of protests from the others. 

 

“Hey, Santa Claus is a hero in our house,” Aries told her.

 

“It’s supposed to be Jesus’ birthday,” Myra wrinkled her nose.

 

“Jesus do anything good for you lately?”  Arcos asked.

 

Myra turned her face away from him, but quickly turned it back for Aries’ body warmth.

 

“Oh, and there’s Groundhog Day,” Crevan put it.  “You’d miss Groundhog Day.”

 

“Groundhog Day?” Medusa laughed.  “Let’s hope that the groundhog doesn’t see her shadow this year, I’m ready for spring.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

On the first nice night of spring, The Children of the Phoenix and their mother went shopping.  They went to their faraway haunts, to replenish on luxuries that had depleted during the winter, and were not worth braving the freezing cold of finding until the weather turned warmer.

Their first stop was the longest one away, the military dump.  All of them usually found something there, if nothing else than the bullet shell casings that Phoenix used as ammunition.  They piled the crime-fighting car full of bits and pieces of this kind of junk and that kind of junk. 

Next stop was each and every school dumpster than they passed.  The amount of blank books, pencils, pens, and erasers they found was so much, that they didn’t have room for it all in the car along with their last haul.

They made a quick stop to the used bookstore, and each sat with books in their lap on the way home, laughing at Medusa’s penchant for cheap, romance novels.

Then, the car went “clunk.”  It was a loud “clunk”.  It jerked and then stopped.

They each looked at each other, and then climbed out of the car.  Aries stuck his head underneath it, and huffed.  “It’s broke.”

“Really?” Medusa said sarcastically.  “We didn’t know that.”

“How broke?” Phoenix asked.

“Real broke,” Aries said.  “Like, more broke than it was than when I first built it.”

The other three slumped their shoulders. 

“We have to come and make a gazillion trips to take all this stuff back home?” Medusa whined.

“We can push it home,” Arcos suggested.

So the four of them started pushing, with Aries at the door turning the steering wheel.

They pushed for what seemed like hours, before Medusa broke their groaning and huffing with, “What’s that over there?”

They all stood up and stretched out their backs.  In a little niche in the wall of the building they were passing was a broken canister surrounded by glowing goo.

“Is that mutagen?” Phoenix asked.

The four of them walked over to it together, and stared down at it.

“It’s a canister of mutagen,” Arcos said.

“What is a canister of mutagen doing sitting next to a building?” Aries asked.

All of them snapped their heads up, when above them they heard, “Raph, no!” and saw the red masked turtle jumping down from the adjacent building, his three pronged knives stuck out in front of him.

“Seriously?” Aries huffed as the four of them drew their weapons.  “You people?  Again?”

Medusa launched herself at the turtle called Raph as he came down, knocking him off of his course.  He landed lithely on his feet.  “We didn’t finish our dance, Medusa.”

“Yeah, we did,” Medusa said annoyed.  “You just didn’t get the hint.” 

She whipped her tail at him, but he jumped over it, and came down to stab at her.  She coiled in on herself to avoid him.

Aries, his axe in his hand, head down, make a rush at the purple masked turtle.  The turtle, obviously used to this particular tactic now, easily danced out of his way, giving him a hard whack on the back with his staff as Aries’ head hit the wall.  The wind was knocked out of the ram, and he fell to his knees.

Arcos swung his sledgehammer at the blue masked turtle, not even moving to engage him, but letting him come to him.  They clashed a few times, their weapons making a clattering noise as they struck each other, before Arcos was forced back with a hard kick to the chest.

The Phoenix was able to let out one bullet from her slingshot before she had to somersault backward to avoid the orange turtle from landing on her.  He swung his nun chucks in a complicated pattern that she had trouble keeping an eye on.  She had no desire, whatsoever, to engage him in combat.  She drew her knife, and danced for all she was worth out of the turtle’s way.

Raph launched a punch at Medusa that landed square on the middle of her body.  Rarely was the snake’s muscled form moved by any gesture, but the force of his punch caused her lurch, her body curving into a C.  The punch made Raph pause long enough, however, for Medusa to whip the end of her body back around and throw him off of her.

Aries stumbled up, and swung his ax as he pivoted around, just blocking another hit from the turtle’s staff.  The turtle recovered quicker than he did, and sent the staff around in an arc, slamming it into Aries’ side.  The force of the blow didn’t move the big ram, but it hurt enough that his swing was off, and the turtle simply strafed out of the way.

Phoenix felt her back against the brick of the building wall, ducked down, and rolled out of the way just before the orange masked turtle hit the wall where she’d been standing with a kick.  He threw out his nun chucks, and she had to slide along the side of the building to avoid them.  She felt the building disappear from her back, she was now at the alley!  She changed the course of her movement, leaping up from the ground, and cartwheeling into the alleyway.  The turtle followed her immediately, not missing a beat.  She jumped around him, so that she wasn’t trapped in the alley with him blocking her in.

Then she saw the huge shadow looming over him.

The orange masked turtle must have seen the look on her face, because his own became troubled.  “What?” he asked, turning around slowly. 

He let out a scream.  So Phoenix let out a matching scream, and the two of them ran out of the alley toward the street.  Despite that Phoenix had started out in front of the turtle, he exited the alley twice as fast as she did.

The strong smell of licorice blasted from behind her as she ran into the road, and the other six stopped froze looking up at the looming monster.

“What’s that?!” Aries voice was several octaves higher than normal.

“I think that’s what found the canister of mutagen!” the purple masked turtled yelled.

The mutant was a stalk, a yellow-green in color, with frond leaves sprouting from the sides of its body.  The top of its head, which easily hit the third floor of the buildings next to it, was a spray of yellow, tiny flowers that snowed down as it stomped toward the road.  What was his face was in an expression of rage, and its eyes glowed an ugly, green color.

Again the smell of licorice filled their nostrils.

“It’s a wild fennel plant!” Phoenix recognized it.  It let out a sort of squeal, and along arm that could just as easily been a stalk, came crashing down at her.  She tumbled out of the way, putting her knife away when she bounced back up, and taking out her slingshot.

The orange masked turtle seemed to have forgotten about her, his attention was on the giant fennel mutant.   He let out a yell of some word she couldn’t understand, and leapt up at the giant fennel.  It whipped out one of its stems and batted him out of the way.  The turtle went “thunk” against the building on the other side of the road.

The other three turtles made their own flying leaps at it, their bodies in various positions of kicks, punches, and swings.  Each made a hit at it, and each was swatted away.

Arcos and Aries simultaneously huffed and roared and lunged at the fennel plant.  They swung at the bottom of its stem, which head several little stump like things that could have been roots.  The creature let out something between a squeal and a scream when their weapons hit it. In a moment, they, too, were on the other side of the street, whipped out by one of its long arms.

Medusa, seeing what it did to the others, darted behind it, her arms at her sides making her look like nothing more than a giant boa constrictor with small shoulders.  She then wrapped herself quickly around its stem and began to squeeze.  It whacked at her with its arms, dislodging her a little.  She managed to keep her hold on him, though, and sank her fangs into its side.

It let out another awful scream.  Phoenix began to pelt it with bullets, aiming at its ugly green eyes.  It didn’t seem to do very much to it, other than annoy it.  It waved one of its arms toward her, but it seemed to not be able to deal with her while trying to get Medusa’s teeth out of its stem, and it missed her by quite a bit.

“Keep distracting it,” the blue masked turtle yelled.  She did as she was told, her arms burning with the speed she was shooting at the creature.

In one group, as if working from one mind, the four turtles and her two sons leapt at the creature, attacking it from all different heights and angles.  As soon as they hit it, Medusa released her hold on it, and backed up.  She struck out with her whip, and began to pull at it to make it fall.  With a sickening crack, it fell down like a giant beanstalk from a fairy tale.  In a moment, eight sharp objects were cutting at it and slashing at it, until it was a series of small pieces lying in the road.

The whole place stank of licorice.

The eight of them stood looking at the pieces of the fennel mutant, breathing heavily.  Phoenix was resting her hands on her knees, and two of the turtles were leaning on each other for support.  Once their breath began to slow, an uncomfortable silence began to grow between the two groups of warriors.

“It smells good,” said the orange turtle, drawing it out and taking a deep inhale in.

The other three turtles looked at him as if he was crazy, and Phoenix, despite her adrenaline rush, had to smile.  It looked like something her own three would do.  The familial scene didn’t knock her attention away, however.  She saw her three heading toward the fire escapes to get to the roof of the buildings and she quickly followed them, flipping herself up until she was on the rooftop, and bounding away back toward the haunted warehouse.

 

The turtles watched as the four other mutants hopped away like rabbits over rooftops.  They all turned toward the abandoned car in the middle of the road, in an obvious position of having been pushed there.

“You think there’s anything good in there?” Raphael asked.

“Duuude,” Mikey poked his head in the open driver’s side door.  “Somebody likes paper.  There’s, like, tons of notebooks in here.”

Leo reached in one of the windows and drew out a notebook.  “Chemistry,” he threw the spiral bound notebook back in the car, getting another one, “English IV.  Trig.  German II?”  He threw them back into the car also.  “It looks like they looted a high school.”

Raphael held up a book with the cover torn off, “The Handsome Highlander.”  He poked his head back in the car, and read off some more titles.  “The Prince of Pleasure.  Dying In His Arms.”  He scoffed.  “Some old lady is hard up.”

“There’s a bunch of mechanical equipment in the trunk,” Donnie said, holding onto the boot lid.  “And bullet shell casings.”  He looked up at his brothers.  “They were out getting supplies.”

“Good,” Raph crossed his arms, “We stopped them.  A job well done.”

Donnie scowled at him, “I really don’t think they’re the bad guys,” he said.  “This is just more proof—“

“Wherever we find them,” Raph put his arms down and leaned forward, “they’re around some Kraang…something!  You don’t find that as proof that they **are** the bad guys?!”

“We’re not going to know if you keep attacking them every time we run into them,” Leo admonished.  

“I don’t trust them,” Raph turned away.  “They smell of Kraang.”

Donnie shook his head.

“Ooo, look!” Mikey held up a graphic novel, smiling proudly.  “Wuthering Hights.  I’m gonna take this one home.”

 

 

Aries put his head in his hands.  “I hurt,” he said.

Medusa took a sip of tea, she took hers black, a cup of which sat in front of the each of them.   “I do too,” she complained.  “That Raph punches hard.”

“Really?” Phoenix couldn’t help but being annoyed.  “He punches hard?”

Medusa looked into her cup sheepishly. 

“They’ve gotten a lot better,” Arcos said.  “Someone was training through the winter.”

“And some other ones weren’t,” Phoenix took a sip of her tea, with expired creamer and sweetener that supposedly caused cancer in rats, but only in California. 

“It’s not like we were playing all winter, Mama,” Medusa said.  “We were trying to keep warm.”

“Moving around would have kept us warm,” Phoenix stood up and put her cup in the sink.  “All we did was sit by the fire, or cuddle together in the bed.”  She huffed.  “We are pathetic superheroes.”

“I thought we were just playing at superheroes,” Aries said.

“Excuse me?” she turned on her son, her eyes ablaze.

Aries pursed his lips together, his mother obviously not in the mood for playing or for attitude.  “I didn’t say anything.”

“I didn’t think you did,” she replied.  “Everyone go to sleep,” she ordered.  “Tomorrow, we start back with our daily routine.”

 

 


	29. Chapter 29

Starting the next morning, the routine began in earnest.  Stretching, tumbling, breakfast, various training, lunch, garden work, house work, then some free time, if there was time, until dinner.  After dinner there was a read-a-loud, something that used to be a several times daily treat, but had fallen by the wayside in recent years.  After the reading, they were each free to do whatever they wished, whether it was indulge in one of their many hobbies, go to the cargo bay, play superheroes, or accompany their mother to clinic.

“I feel like a little kid,” Aries grumbled about it when Phoenix wasn’t listening.

“You’re just upset you can’t see Myra as much,” Medusa spat at him, having no patience for his complaining.  “Maybe if you concentrated on what was important, and not what was in your pants, you wouldn’t feel so sorry for yourself.”

“Shut up, Medusa!” Aries huffed.

“Aries,” Phoenix called, “watch your language.”

Aries pouted, and gave Medusa a death glare.

She turned her back on him, twisting her body elegantly.

Phoenix came over to them, “I’m going out to clinic.  Be good.”  She looked hard at Aries.

Once out, she made her way to Jack Kurtzman’s.  She had worn the best ordinary clothes she had, a pair of skinny jeans with a tunic-length, button up plaid shirt.  Walking on the street with people watching her made her highly uncomfortable.  It was as if thousands of eyes were on her, looking her up and down, and coming to some sort of conclusion about what they saw that she was sure she wouldn’t like.  She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to dress in her casual best. Few paid attention to her, as usual when she walked among the denizens of the city.  She came to his apartment building, walking up the stairs, and knocked on his door.

He opened it a little bit, keeping the chain lock hinged.  Seeing who it was, he closed the door, finished unlocking it, and opened the door.  “Phoenix,” he nodded, and motioned her to come inside.

She came in, and he closed the door behind her.  “I hope I am not disturbing you, Mr. Kurtzman,” she said politely.  It sounded strange to her tongue to speak this way.  Had it been so long that she spoken civilly to someone?  Was she around such crassness that actions and attitudes that would be taken for granted when she was young were now foreign?  Or was she so used to being the queen of her own territory that speaking with deference to anyone was so off putting it made her uncomfortable?  She didn’t like any option.

“Not at all,” he replied.  “It is always a pleasure.”  His place was a mess of papers, just as it was last time, only this time there were different files and papers lying about.  He had a Coca Cola sitting on his desk, and she must have looked at it a little too long.  “Would you like a Coke?” he asked.

She laughed nervously, and blushed.  “I would love a Coke.”

He left the living room, and Phoenix looked at his desk.  There as a photo of a girl, she couldn’t have been out of high school yet, sitting on the top of a folder labeled April O’Neil.  She picked it up and looked at.  The girl had a heart shaped face, with large, blue eyes, and red hair.  While she was slender, her body was curvy, an obvious hourglass shape, a stark contrast to Phoenix’s own tomboyish body frame.  Kurtzman came back in carrying a can, and she put the photo down.

He handed the Coke to her.  “What can I do for you this evening?” he asked.

“I need a lead,” she popped the can open.  “We haven’t been able to find the Kraang anywhere…whenever we get somewhere, they’re long gone.”

He chuckled.  “Sneaky buggers, aren’t they?”

“I’m not sure how they’re so sneaky,” she replied.  “They seem to be awfully messy.”  She took a sip of the Coke, and had to work to school her features from surprise.  It didn’t taste anything like she remembered.  She remembered sweet, carbony goodness, bubbles crackling against her tongue and tickling her nose.  This tasted like sugar and salt water, with some other flavor mixed in.  The carbonation almost stung her mouth, and did sting her throat as she swallowed.  She had to keep from gagging, it was so sickeningly sweet.

“They have good clean up crews,” Kurtzman seemed not to notice her internal fight with the soda.  “What kind of leads are you looking for?”

“Any,” she said with a sigh.  “Like I said, all of my information is either too late, or my sources are dried up.”  You sound like you have a crime syndicate working for you, she told herself.  Not a petty gang keeping their eyes out when they feel like it.

Kurtzman nodded.  “I think they’re recuperating from the TCRI building incident,” he said.  “They’ve been a bit quiet lately. “

“Yeah,” she scoffed slightly.  “The TCRI building incident.”

“I take you participated in it,” Kurtzman gestured for her to sit down.

She shook her head, “You could say that.”

He took out a file from underneath the pile of papers on his desk.  “They’re rebuilding the building,” he handed her a newspaper article titled, “Gas Leak Explosion Doesn’t Stop TCRI” with a photo of a construction crew working on the top of the building. 

“Gas leak explosion?” she read dubiously.

“That’s what they’re telling the public,” Kurtzman said. 

“And the public believes them?”

“The public isn’t very smart,” Kurtzman told her. 

Phoenix shook her head.   “I feel like…” she shook her head again.

“That you’re the only one in this fight?” Kurtzman finished for her.  “You’re not. “

Her first reaction was to say, “I wish we were more organized then.”  But as soon as it popped into her head, she didn’t wish it so.  She didn’t want to work with anyone else, she didn’t want to be part of an army.  She didn’t want to share.  Share what? she asked herself.  Share her children.  They were no one else’s, not fodder to be commanded by some general in a war against aliens.  They were hers. 

So she said instead, “Thank you, Mr. Kurtzman.”  She headed toward the door, and turned back to look at him  “I wish there was a way I could thank you, other than just saying thank you.”

“You’re in the thick of it,” he said.  “And you help others who are in the thick of it.  That’s thanks enough.”

He sounded like she did, she thought. It came across as slightly pretensious, and she wondered if she sounded that way when she said similar things.  She opened the door, and waved before closing it again.  When she got to the street, she put the Coke can in the garbage.  It made a sloshing noise with all the liquid that was still in it.  She then went down a little alley and listened for the unbidden thought to tell her where to go.

It was frustratingly silent on this night.  She finally got tired of wandering, and sat down on a garbage can that was dry and, relatively, clean.  She felt unprotected and alone when the voice that wasn’t her voice wouldn’t talk to her.  She relied on it now, in a way she never had done with she was younger, to tell her where to go, what to do when she was didn’t know what to do.  She needed it to remind her how to know that she knew whatever it was that she knew how to do.  The quiet of the deepening night didn’t help her sense of aloneness any, and the scuffling of rats and cats in the dumpster close by was ominous sounding.

She then heard a scuffle that was distinct from the others she’d been listening to in the darkness.  It was heavier, and slower, as if it took more effort to make the sound.  She waited, listening.

Nothing happened.  Just when she thought the noise was not going to come back, it did, closer to her now than it was before, in the shadows, where her eyes couldn’t make out any shapes.

“You can come out,” she called, trying to keep her voice calm. 

The night was silent.

“I won’t hurt you,” she said.  “Are you hurt?”

“A little,” came a gravelly voice from her side.  She whipped her head in that direction, but it was dark, no light at all emanating from the space, and she could see nothing.

She took a deep breath.  “I can help you,” she said gently.  “That’s what I do.”

“I know,” said the gravelly voice.  It did not come out of the shadows.

After a moment of neither of them saying anything, Phoenix smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way.  “I can’t help you if you won’t come into the light for me to see.”

It was quiet for such a long time, that she thought the owner of the gravelly voice had gone, or was, at the very least, not going to come out of the shadows.   But then, a great shape came slowly toward her, and she started and gasped.

It was a large turtle.  He had a highly defined beak with the edges jagged.  Spikes stuck out on his shell like barnacles on a boat.   He had a dark mask on, and a belt, which held a weapon of a short pole with a spiked ball on the end of a chain attached to it.  He walked slowly toward her, and stopped just outside of the shadows.  “Not what you expected?” he asked, a smirk on his face.

“You startled me,” Phoenix shook her head vehemently, not wanting him to feel that she in anyway thought less of him because of him being a mutant.  “I wasn’t expecting a turtle,” she said truthfully.  He didn’t move any closer.  He was holding his side, and he regarded her closely, as if deciding whether to trust her or not.  “I don’t bite,” she assured him, hoping her comment had not offended him.  “You can come over here in the light                                , and I can help you.”

He moved to her slowly, the shuffling noise was his leg only lifting a little ways off of the ground.  She stood up as he came closer, and again, she was struck at his size.  He was huge. 

“You’ve hurt your leg?” she asked, taking a few steps toward him now that he was firmly in the light where she could see.

“I fell on it,” he said.

“From…?” she waited for the reply.

“From a rooftop,” he said.                                                       

She chuckled and shook her head.  “Mutants like rooftops,” she said quietly.  “Let’s get a look at you, then.”  She took off both of her messenger bags, and barely had to bend down to examine his leg, he was so large.  She ran her hand over his thigh gently where the smudge in his glow-that-was-not-a-glow was.  She felt his muscles tense at her touch, and she removed her hand as soon as she was examining his leg.  “It looks like you’ve just sprained it, and you sprained a while ago,” she accused.

He looked down at her, bending his head only a little bit.  His eyes were beady and small, in a small head attached to his huge, circular body.  “A while ago, yeah,” he answered.

“This isn’t why you came to see me,” she said, standing up to her full height, which wasn’t very tall compared to him.

“No,” he said.  He turned slowly, so that his other leg was facing her, and she gasped in surprise again. 

She thought she was passed being surprised by injuries.  She’d seen some nasty ones, and some simple ones that had turned nasty from lack of care.  She’d seen gun wounds, and knife wounds, and bite wounds.  But this was a large gash along this thigh, a deep burning laceration that was beginning to fester.  She knew what caused it.  “You were shot with a laser,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer her.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Three days ago,” he said in his gravelly voice.

“I need to clean it,” she told him quickly, going in her bag and getting out what she needed.  She splashed wash on it, warning him, ‘It might sting a bit.”  The big turtle didn’t give any indication that he’d felt it.  She began to tend the wound, her hands lightly on his leg.  She felt the muscle jump occasionally, as if he was having trouble letting him touch her.  “I haven’t seen you before,” she tried to sound conversational.  “Did someone tell you to come and find me?”

“Yes,” was all he said.

“How did you know where I would be?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” he replied.  “I got lucky.”

Luck seemed to be a big part of her life nowadays.  “What’s your name?” her voice turned maternal.

“Slash,” he said.

“I guess you already know mine,” she chuckled, her eyes intent on the long burn mark on his leg.

“The Phoenix,” he said.  “Who heals mutants, when they can find her.”

“Is that the mutant who sent you to me said?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he seemed to be getting a little more comfortable, his voice, while still gravelly, was no longer as harsh.  “A bug.  Name Shuzz.”

She looked up at him a smiled, “Oh, Shuzz!”  She nodded.  “How is Shuzz?”

“He seemed to be fine,” Slash said.

There was a moment of quiet as she placed a bandage around his leg, her hands weaving in and out around his thigh to secure it.  “Do you have anyone?” she asked gently.  “If you don’t—“

“I don’t need anyone,” he cut her off.

“Everyone needs someone,” Phoenix said tenderly

“I don’t.”  He looked down at her intently, and then he smiled a little half smile, as if it was working its way onto his face without him wanting it.  “I’m fine.”

“I am not saying you aren’t,” Phoenix took a baby food jar out of her bag.  “I’m simply saying that I know that it hurts.”  She pointed to his leg, “You’ve had a run in with the Kraang.  It helps to not be alone when you’re on their radar.”

His eyes widened slightly.  “You know about the Kraang?”

“Unfortunately,” she held the jar out to him.  “Put this on your shot three times a day, and it should heal pretty well.  You’ll have a little scar, but not much.”

He took the jar from her, she could have fit five of her hands into his one.  “Thanks.”

“Did you find the Kraang, or did they find you?”

“They found me,” he said. 

She got a sinking feeling.  “On purpose?” she asked gently.

“I think so,” he looked at the wall of the building, as if seeing something there she didn’t.  “They were…prepared.”

She took a deep breath.

“But next time,” he looked down at her again, “next time I will be prepared.”

“You don’t want there to be a next time, Slash,” she told him.  “The Kraang aren’t play things.  And if they are after you for some reason, you are in grave danger.”

“And you know this, how?” he asked, his voice derisive.

“You aren’t the only one whose ever been chased by the Kraang,” her own voice was not so gentle anymore.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, tucking the jar away.  “Thanks for the medicine.”

“You’re welcome,” she told him.  “Be careful out there.”

He chuckled at her, as if she was suggesting he sweep the street with his tongue.  “Yeah.”


	30. Chapter 30

Medusa flew over a rooftop, like the shadow of a shooting star against the darkening sky, followed by Razz, graceful in his own movements, but nowhere near as elegant.    The sun had set, but there was still a faint light in the sky, a need to be careful until night fully descended.  She stopped at the edge of one of the buildings, looking down into the street below.  Razz came up next to her, following her gaze to a burned out lot, rubble and debris spread about it like a child having left out its building blocks.

“That’s where that lab was I was telling you about,” Medusa said quietly.  “The one with all of the bodies in it, where we met Kurtzman.”

“You sure this Kurtzman safe to be around?” Razz asked.

Medusa looked at him sidelong, and smiled.  “I’m not around him,” she said.

“The Phoenix is, though, isn’t she?”

“You make it sound like she goes to see him on a regular basis.”  She shook her head, “she’s only seen him twice.”

Razz looked at her dubiously.

“I doubt a private investigator is going to be able to take my mother in a fight, Razz.”

“I dunno,” he drawled.  “She’s so small…”

“Small, but mighty,” Medusa laughed.  “She was trained by you, you should have more confidence.”

“It isn’t that I lack confidence in her abilities,” Razz explained.  “I lack confidence in her…” he paused looking for the word.  “Human-ness.” 

“Then don’t be worried about Kurtzman,” Medusa assured him.  “He’s human too.  So she’s definitely one up on him.”  She slid down the side of the building to the street, and made her way to the burned lot.

“I don’t see how you all don’t freak out whenever she goes out,” Razz was saying, following her.  “She’s like a mouse.”

“There is nothing we can do.  Have you ever tried to stop her from doing something,” Medusa turned to him and put her hands on her hips.

Razz fell silent.

“You go ahead and try to keep her from doing clinic or going out with us,” Medusa suggested, turning back to the debris.  “See what happens.”

Razz thought he’d rather not. 

“Listen,” she said, her voice softening, “we have a good rhythm going.  She knows what she is doing, Aries knows what he’s doing, Arcos knows what he’s doing, and I know what I’m doing.  Everyone worries about everyone when we’re in a fight.  And everyone does their job.  No more complaining.”

“So what exactly are we looking for here?” Trying not to complain was harder than it looked.

“Anything that might give us an idea of where the Kraang might be, other than the TCRI building.  The place is crawling with people, and we’d rather not get into that mess until we have to.”

“You sound like the commander of an army,” Razz chuckled.

“Nope,” Medusa said cheerfully.  “Just an infantry soldier.”

“Hardly an infantry soldier,” he replied.

She smiled a cheeky smile at him, one that sent a wave of heat through his body whenever she looked at him that way.  “Keep looking,” she said, sounding a great deal like her mother.

“We’re looking for something that will lead us to a Kraang building, but we don’t know what we’re looking for,” Razz clarified.

“Yes,” Medusa nodded.

“This is crazy.”

“Yes,” Medusa nodded again.

They rummaged through the wreckage of the building, sifting through burnt materials and wet ash.  Their hands and feet became black with the soot, and when they tried to clear the black stuff off of an item, it now left only smudges.

Razz saw something shiny under a burned sheet of metal.  Reaching down, he retrieved an orb, about the size of a basketball.  It seemed to repel the soot, it was clean, and even his hands did not leave marks where he touched it.  “Something like this?” he held it up for Medusa to see.

Her black eyes went wide.  “Exactly like that.”

 

“What is it?” Aries asked, looking at the metal ball.

Medusa looked at him sitting at the kitchen table like he was an idiot.  “If we knew, wool-for-brains,” she said, “we’d do something other than look at it, wouldn’t we?”

That was all the little group was doing.  They couldn’t figure out what else **to** do with it. 

“It’s obviously Kraang,” Arcos said.  “I wonder if it has something to do with all those bodies in those jars?”

“Bodies in jars?” Razz looked from each of the Children of the Phoenix and their mother.  “No one said anything about bodies in jars.”

“There aren’t any more bodies in jars,” Medusa said.  “We burned them.”

“We were rummaging through burned bodies?” Razz made a face.  “Even Chategris doesn’t have us doing that.”

“No,” Aries said, crossing his arms.  “He just has you burn the bodies in the first place.”

Razz made a noise that sounded reminiscent of a growl.

“Stop it,” Phoenix said, her eyes still on the orb.  “How are we going to figure out what this is and how it works?”

“Stare at it,” Arcos said smiling.

Phoenix squinted her eyes, and leaned forward, staring hard at it.  “Nope, doesn’t do anything.”  She smiled at the bear.

“We’ll figure out something,” Arcos said, picking up the ball and putting it in the decorative bowl on the bookshelf that held Phoenix’s old wedding rings.  “It doesn’t seem to be a weapon, so I think we’ll be safe with it here.”

“I’m headed back,” Razz said.  “Be careful with that thing.”

“I’ll go with you,” Aries said, nodding goodbye to his mother.

Arcos and Medusa followed them to the garden window.

“Have fun,” Phoenix said, smiling at them as they left.  “Be good.”

“Always,” Arcos said. 

They soared over the rooftops, the path well trod from the haunted warehouse to the cargo bay.  The moon shone cold, white light over the city, almost full.  There was no longer anyone waiting for them at the roof of the warehouse, they were enough of a fixture there that they’re presence didn’t need to be announced. 

Chategris was in his usual position, at the opening of the cargo bay, talking with Klashtooth.  He didn’t look happy, his arms crossed his chest, the white sock of his paw sticking out under this elbow.  He turned, and saw the four mutants walking toward them, and scowled at Razz, “Been off playing, I see.”

“All work and no play makes Razz a dull boy,” the lizard replied.

Chategris shot a glance at Medusa, whether it was unpleasant or just because he was already in a bad mood, it was hard to say.  “We have work to do tonight,” he said, “before the sun comes up.”  He looked at Arcos, “The three of you can go home.”  They had never accompanied him on any of his work, despite his many invitations.

Arcos nodded, and the three of them turned to go.  “Wait,” Chategris called.

They turned around.  The leader of the Grey Cats had a considering look on his face.  “You say you were attacked by ninjas?  That they are in league with your aliens?”

“Yes,” Arcos drawled.

The cat smiled.  “Do you want to eliminate some ninjas?”

“What do you mean?”

“My territory keeps getting encroached upon.  These ninjas,” he spat the word, “do not heed my borders, do not heed my streets.  They have been seen in Flatbush,” his voice was vehement.  “Flatbush are my streets.”

“You’re planning on waiting in Flatbush for them to come back?” Aries asked.

“No,” Klashtooth smiled, looking menacing with his large front teeth and his eyes on the side of his head.  “We found where they’re headquartered.”

“You what?”  Medusa darted her head forward. 

“We found their hideout,’ Klashtooth leaned forward himself.  “And we are attacking it tonight.”

Medusa looked at her brothers, and they looked at her. 

“If we can get rid of these ninjas…” Aries’ voice trailed off.

“…that would make fighting the Kraang a lot easier,” Arcos said.

“We have a common enemy,” Chategris said, a vicious smile on his lips.  “Shall we go hunting?”

“Yes,” Arcos mimicked the smile.

Chategris called his fighters to him, a large group of mutants of all shapes and sizes.  It was most of his people, leaving precious few at the cargo bay.  All of his people could fight, there wasn’t a one among them that hadn’t proven themselves to become a permanent resident here by winning a fight. 

Myra came to stand beside Aries, a bloodthirsty fire in her large, brown eyes.  “Glad you finally decided to join us,” she said.  “Now I get to see how you do the superhero business.”

He bent down and kissed her, and she returned the kiss hungrily.  “Better than anyone else does,” he replied.

Chategris looked and Myra and frowned, and then shook his head.  “You need to get farther down the line,” he told her.

Myra’s mouth turned to a pout, and she looked at Aries.

“Why can’t she stay up here with us?” Aries asked.  “There’s assigned seats for a mob?”

“Non,” Chategris replied.   He looked at Myra, “Your pillow isn’t up here.”

“She is now,” Aires said narrowly.

“Let’s not fight about this now,” Arcos said, putting a hand on Chategris’ arm.  The cat turned to him quickly, his mouth in a snarl.  “Let’s go hunting,” he continued, “and you can reestablish the pecking order later.”

Chategris looked at him, continue to bare his teeth at the bear.  It occurred to Arcos that his mother was more of a protection against the Grey Cats leader’s wrath than he had previously given her credit for.  Chategris would never have looked at him that way if she were present.  “Oui,” he said finally.  “Let’s go hunting.”

Klashtooth lead them through the city, over rooftops, a seeming swarm of mutants quietly, if not silently, following him.  When he stopped, and gestured, “It’s two blocks that way.”

“We should check it out,” Aires said.  “Get a lay of the place.”

Klashtooth nodded, and then looked to Chategris.  The cat was silent for a moment, before saying, “Oui,” and turning to leap to the next roof.

They went to a building that looked like it had been a church at one time, or perhaps a very fancy bank.  It had columns and beautiful stained glass windows.  There was a large clock in the middle center that told the correct time, 9:32 PM.  Chategris had left most his people on the rooftop several streets away, bringing only his highest ranking and The Children of the Phoenix.  The stayed in the shadows of the building across the street, surveying the property.

“So what’s the plan?” Arcos asked.

“We go in and crush some ninjas,” Klashtooth said.

Arcos raised an eyebrow.  “Are you serious?”  He looked at Chategris, “That’s your plan?”

“We need no other plan,” Chategris said.  “We take them by surprise.  We break the windows, we break down the door, and then we start killing.  What is so complicated about that?”

No wonder the ninjas did such a number on them last time, Arcos thought to himself.

“That’s fighting in an enclosed space,” Medusa looked at Razz, as if expecting him to back her up.  The lizard said nothing.  “We don’t want to fight them in an enclosed space.  We want to draw them out to the street.”

The snarl returned to Chategris’ face.  “You are telling me how to order my own men?”

“No,” Arcos said quickly, “she’s telling you good strategy.”

“Force is all the strategy I need,” Chategris’ voice edged in a growl.

The Children of the Phoenix looked at each other with undecided expressions.  Finally, Aries shook his head.  “I’m all for force,” he said, “but if we’re taking down who knows how many ninjas, I’m not doing it just barging in, with no kind of plan.”

Arcos and Medusa nodded.  “We’re out, Chategris.”

Chategris actually snarled, “You’re out?”

“Yes,” Arcos said forcefully.  “We do not do what you say, we do what we say.  And we say, we aren’t going doing this without a strategy.  You are in charge.  If you want to go in without one, that is your prerogative.  But we are not participating.”

He and Arcos stared at each other in the eyes for a few moments, before Arcos broke off the staring match, and motioned for his siblings to follow him.  Medusa looked to Razz again, with a questioning look on her face.  The lizard turned away from her, giving her the back of his head.

Aries gave Myra a similar look, motioning with his head for her to come with them.  She looked conflicted, looking to Chategris and then back to Aries. 

“Go back to the others,” Chategris said to her, his voice deadly.

The pretty dog took a deep breath, and then nodded, turning from the ram and quietly jumping up the fire escapes to the roof above them.

The Children of the Phoenix all stared at Chategris for a moment longer, before they took off in the alleyway where they were hiding, back toward the haunted warehouse. 

“I don’t understand,” Aries said, once they had slowed down to a walking pace.  “His strategy is to just go in and bash people.  We had more of a strategy than that the first time we stopped those guys in the pawn shop.”

“Maybe he just isn’t a good strategist,” Arcos mused.  “Or maybe he hasn’t had any experience with actually fighting people who know what they’re doing.”

“That can’t be right,” Aries argued.  “They’ve gotten in fights with whole gangs, driving them out of his ‘turf’.”  Aries spat out the last word, curling his lip.

“Maybe those people fought the same way,” Arcos shook his head.  “Whoever has the bigger bat wins.”

“They’re going to get creamed,” Medusa said quietly. 

Arcos looked at his little sister, who he was sure was larger and stronger than both he and his brother.  “They are,” he said softly.

She gave him a sad look, all of them slowing to a stroll.  “Razz is the one who taught us not to fight in an enclosed space if we could help it.   Why didn’t he say anything?”

Both Aries and Arcos were silent.

“This is crazy,” she went on.  “They’re going to get slaughtered!”

“There isn’t anything we can do about it,” Aries said.  

“They all just stood there,” Medusa stopped, and looked at her brothers, confused.  “They all just stood there, and they’re going to follow what he says.”

Neither of her brothers answered her.

“I don’t understand…” her voice trailed away.  “Why?” she spoke up again.  “Why would they do that?”

Aries’ face became clouded, and then turned resolved.  ‘I don’t know, Medusa,” he answered, his voice tight.

Medusa looked to Arcos, and he shrugged.  “This isn’t the cargo bay.  I guess things work very differently when they’re out here.”

“Obviously,” Medusa turned and began slithering toward the warehouse, her hand quickly wiping her eyes.

***

The four of them were gone, leaving Phoenix alone in the warehouse.

She didn’t like being alone without a task.  It gave her too much time to think.  Their days were very full now, training, shopping, gardening, alien hunting.  But the highly rigorous schedule had slackened some, once Phoenix had seen some improvement in all of their skills.  Her mind was occupied almost all day long, besides from her daily yoga routine, she hadn’t meditated, felt she hadn’t needed to meditate, since the spring began, and she still had not figured out what was supposed to do with the information she’d been given through her meditations before the winter began.

With nothing else to occupy her, her thoughts strayed to things she tried to push out of the way when they wiggled in.  Dojo.  Sewers.  Water dripping.  Growing things.  None of it made any sense to her, even after an entire season of letting it percolate in her subconscious.  She had a stab of guilt at the thought that maybe she hadn’t let it percolate.  Maybe she’d simply squished it down under a conscious finger, and held it there, so it couldn’t move.

She shook her head, and stood up, the rest of the warehouse beckoned with a myriad of things to do.  Rather than do something that needed to be done, such as clean the kitchen, or tend the garden, she went to the little gym, and jumped up to the uneven bars and began to spin around each bar rhythmically, up and down, jump up, thwap, up and down, jump down, thwap, up and down....the rhythmic movement with the soft thwap of letting go of each of the bars put her in a soft state, void of thought and feeling.

 

_Listen_

She listened, her body moving up and down, jump up, thwap, up and down, jump down, thwap, up and down.  All she heard was the sounds she made in the air and the bars reverberating, and the sounds of the night drifting in through the open window.

_Listen_.

I am listening.

Her body continued with the movement that it knew by muscle memory, a movement she’d done since before she had hit the double digits; up and down, jump up, thwap, up and down, jump down, thwap.  She moved, and paid attention to the thwap, her mind going blissfully blank in the movement.

_Listen_

She listened to the sound of the bars, the sound of her movement, the sound of her increasingly heavy breathing.  Then, interspersed in the thwap, thwap, thwap of her release of the bar she heard the deep, staccato voice, almost in a sing song rhythm that matched her movements.  She simply listened to it, an indistinct sound, with a tiny space between each one.  It was resonant and pleasant, she liked it, and felt her face smile slightly as she listened to it. 

What a nice voice, she thought.

The voice!

She gasped, and almost missed the bar.  She turned around it twice, and then let go, flipping onto the floor with a flourish.  The voice!  She hadn’t considered the voice!

She’d considered the smells, the sights, the sounds, the word that the deep, staccato voice told her, but she hadn’t considered the voice itself! 

Her elation at her breakthrough drained away with the thought, How does one consider a voice when not considering what it said?

 


	31. Chapter 31

“Wait!” 

The Children of the Phoenix all turned around at the sound of Crevan’s voice.

“Wait!”  He ran up to them, out of breath.  “Chategris wants you to come back.”

“Tell Chategris he can va te faire foutre!”  Aries said.  “He’ll know what it means.”

“I don’t think that’s how you say it,” Arcos muttered.

“He said he had forgotten how picky The Children of the Phoenix are,” Crevan’s voice sounded very young, the cocky confidence he usually displayed, gone.  “Of course, he said, they wouldn’t go in with a strategy.”  He looked at each of them, one to the other, “He wants you to come back and tell him your strategy.”

“What good is telling strategy if he doesn’t **do** the strategy?” Medusa spat.

Crevan looked to be at a loss.  He raised his hands.

“You tell Chategris,” Arcos said.  “If he **and** his people will follow our strategy, then we will help.  We will wait here for the 30 minutes.”  When Crevan didn’t move, he continued, “Better go, brother.  You’re running out of time.”

Crevan turned abruptly, his silver tail flashing in the moonlight, and disappeared the way he came.

“Are we going to help them?” Medusa asked.

“We were going to when we thought they had a strategy,” Arcos crossed his arms.  “Why not now?”

“None of them will have our backs,” Aries said in a low tone.

“No,” Arcos looked at both of his siblings with a grave face.  “We have to have each other’s back.  We’re not looking out for any of the Grey Cats.”

“We need to get Mama,” Medusa said.

Aries shook his head, “No one will have her back.”

“We will have her back,” Medusa replied.

“She’s a fabulous shot,” Arcos said.  “And we can keep her out of the melee.”  He took a deep breath and looked at the almost full moon.  “We will wait until Crevan gets back.  If Chategris’ agrees, then we’ll send Crevan to get Mama.”

“This is like a war,” Aries muttered.

“Ninjas are martial artists,” Medusa sang, though her voice was still heavy despite it.  “They excel at the art of war.”

Aries shook his great head.  “This wasn’t supposed to be a war.”

“It became a war the day the Kraang came back into our lives.”

It was not long before Crevan was back, well before the 30 minute mark.  “Chategris says, of course.  Why would he hear your stategy if he wasn’t going to use it if it was good?”  His breath was heavier than before, he obviously hadn’t rested between runs.

“I guess that is the closest we’re going to get to an ‘I’m sorry’ from him, huh?” Aries said.

“It’s more of an ‘I’m sorry’ than anyone ever gets,” Crevan breathed.  “Please, go back.  Don’t make us go in there without some sort of plan.”

“You have a plan,” Medusa crossed her tiny arms.  “Go in and bash people.”

Crevan gave her a pleading look.  “I’m not in charge,” he argued.  “I’m not the one who comes up with stuff.  I do what I am told.  You,” his eyes swept the three of them, “you can suggest things to him.”

“We will go back to Chategris,” Arcos said.  Immediately Crevan’s face flooded with relief.  “You,” Arcos pointed at him, “are going to get The Phoenix.”  Crevan’s eyes went wide.  “We won’t start until she’s there.”

Crevan shook his head.  “Wh—“

”It doesn’t matter,” Arcos cut him off.  “Just do it, or we don’t do it.”

The fox looked at each of them again, and nodded reluctantly.  He ran off in the direction of the haunted warehouse.

The Children of the Phoenix came back to the rooftop where the Grey Cats were waiting, several buildings away.  They were still very quiet, weapons drawn but hanging limply at their sides.  Chategris walked over to them, a derisive smile on his face.  “Bonjour,” he said, as if seeing them for the first time.  “I forget, sometimes,” his heavily accented voice was slow as he drew the words out, “that The Children of the Phoenix are…fastidious.”

“Your people are going to follow directions?” Aries’ voice was low, edged with a huff.

“My people follow my directions,” Chategris said.  “Implicitly.”

Arcos put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.  “We won’t go in until our mother gets here.  But we can talk strategy until then.”

Chategris snarled slightly, and then nodded his head.  “Oui,” he replied.  “Parlez avec moi,” <talk with me>.

“We need three…” Arcos shook his head.  Having never had to explain a strategy that he and his family implemented automatically, he was at a loss for terms.  “…three sections.  We have…archers…which are the back and elevated.  Mama will be in charge of them.”  The scowl on Chategris’ face deepened.  “We have the back line of defense,” he looked to his sister.  “Medusa, you’re the strongest solo fighter among us, you will be in charge of them.”

“Razz will be with her,” Chategris interrupted.

“And we have an offense.”  Arcos looked Chategris in the eyes, “You, Aries and I will be in charge of that.”

Chategris nodded.

“I’m not to be in the front line?” Razz’s tail swished in annoyance.  “I’m in the back?”

“You’re in the back, making sure no one gets behind us to surround us,” Arcos said.  “There will be plenty of people for you to…do whatever you do to them.”

“Klashtooth,” Chategris turned to his lieutenant. “You will go with the Phoenix when she gets here.”

The rabbit nodded, his ears bouncing slightly.

“Do you know who should go in what group?” Aries asked.

“Oui,” Chategris nodded to Razz and Klashtooth, who disappeared into the group of mutants to separate them into their prospective groups.

It took longer than any of them would have liked for Crevan to finally arrive with the Phoenix, but he did.  She came with both her medical bags across her shoulders, and her leather fingerless gloves on her hands.

“We’re attacking the ninjas?” she walked up without ceremony to her children and Chategris.

“Oui,” Chategris said.

“OK,” she looked to the leader of the Grey Cats.  “What’s the plan?”

Chategris was silent for a moment, his hair raising slightly, as if the question rankled him.  He then looked to Arcos, and made a motion with his head toward his mother.

“You are going to be with the archers,” Arcos told her.  “There are building rooftops, and an apartment building with fire escapes that have clear shots at the street in front of their headquarters.  You are going to stay out of the way, and you’re going to pick people off.  That simple.  There are windows, we don’t want them breaking.  They give us a barrier that they may not want to break.  It makes it harder for their people to come outside.”

Phoenix nodded.

“You’ll be with Klashtooth, Mama,” Arcos said.  “He listens to you.”  He said the last of it emphasizing each word.  “He’s picked out your archers.  If we have to fall back, we fall back to here,” he pointed down at the rooftop.”

Took off her messenger bags, and leaned them against the water tower rigging.  “Come on, Bunny-foo-foo,” she said.  “Let’s go pick off some ninjas.”

The Children of the Phoenix and Chategris watched as the archers quietly made their way over to the ninja headquarters.   When they arrived at the roof opposite the building, Phoenix called everyone close.  They surrounded her, like a tight ring around the rosy with her in the middle.

“We don’t want to shatter any of the windows,” she said right away.  “That will make the door the only way that they can get out of the building.”

“We can pick them off as they come out,” Klashtooth said.  “And lessen our casualties.”

Phoenix looked up at him approvingly.  “Exactly.”

“But the top window is already broken,” someone said.  “Do we break that one out?”

“No,” Phoenix explained.  “That is the one place they can have a sniper where we can’t get to them.  We need to make sure no one comes out of that hole, and whoever decides to shoot out of it ends up…” her voice trailed off.

“Dead,” Klashtooth finished.

“Yeah,” Phoenix said quickly.  “Who are our most reliable shots?”

Three mutant raised their hands

 “You three will stay here,” she pointed to the edge of the building.  “Your job is to make sure no one is allowed to come out or shoot from that hole, and to make sure no one shoots as us,” she waved her hand at the rest of the group.  “ Half of us will go on either side of the building,” she continued, “and we get the enemies numbers down as much as possible.”

She looked hard at each and every member of the archer team.  “You don’t leave your post.  You will be the last people to leave your posts.  If we retreat, we provide cover.”  She paused and took a deep breath.  “Unless someone is dragging you way, you stay put.”

There were nods all the way around.

“Everyone understand what they’re doing?” Klashtooth asked, his face already in a snarl.

Again, there were nods all the way around.

“Everyone will follow orders,” Phoenix said.

“They will answer to me if they don’t,” Klashtooth’s voice was flat.

Phoenix put her hand out, palm down, and everyone stared at it.  “Hands in,” she ordered.

A group of animalistic hands, with two fingers, three fingers, four fingers, five fingers, and six fingers all laid their palms on top of the little human hand on the bottom.  “Our job is protect those below us,” she said gently.  “We do our job.”

There was a muffled, “We do our job,” before the hands retreated.

“How many times have you done this?” asked a mutant.

“The same amount of time you have,” she answered.  “None.”

“Amazing what you can do when you think about what you’re doing,” Klashtooth said, glaring at the mutant.

“Everyone get to their stations,” Phoenix said.  “As silently as possible.”  They all began to disperse.  “Oh!” she called out in a harsh whisper, “and if you see a turtle, shoot it in the head!”   Klashtooth turned to go, “Klashtooth, can I talk with you for a moment?”

The rabbit nodded and walked back over to her.

“You’re the one who found this place, right?” she made her voice quiet.  “What are our chances?”

“I think they’re pretty good,” he said.  “There isn’t as many of them as there are of us.  We’ll be taking them by surprise.”  He smiled, and Phoenix thought it might have been the very first time she’d seen him do so, “and we have a plan.”

“Let’s hope our plan works.”

***

Medusa and Razz lead their group to a roof off to the left of the ninja headquarters, where they could see the layout of the ‘battlefield’.    Medusa gave Razz a sidelong look, and then turned to those behind her.  “There are five pathways we need to block,” she explained. 

“There are the two streets that lead away from the road,” Razz interjected.  “The street we’ll be coming in on, the rooftops, and behind the bank building.  We’ll have groups at all those locations.”

“No we won’t,” Medusa’s tail flicked ominously.  “We won’t be behind the buildings.  If they have to go out the back, then they will have to separate to get through to us, that makes their numbers less.”  She looked at Razz, as if daring him to contradict her. 

“We will split up in four groups, then—“  Razz began.

“No,” Medusa hissed.  She turned to the group, and physically slithered in front of the lizard.  “We have three groups, each blocking the roads out.  The archers were take care of the rooftops.  We will have a lookout at each end of the street to let us know if they’re coming at us from behind.”  She undulated her body, reminiscent of a throat swallowing.  ““We don’t retreat unless Arcos or Chategris tells us too.  You do as you’re ordered, and you stay where you’re told.”  She looked at each of them, then turned her entire upper body around the look at Razz.  “If you don’t, you will have to deal with me.”  She opened her mouth, and unhinged it.  It began a great gaping hole with two magnificent fangs hanging down from each side.  “If you think that Chategris is hard on you,” she threatened, “try me.”

***

On the fall back roof, Arcos and Chategris stood with the bulk of the fighters.  They were crowded in tight, so they could hear what was being said.  “There are guards at the door,” Chategris was saying.  “We take them out first.  If no one comes to their aid, we break down the door.”  He paused and cocked his head to the side, listening.  “We wait for them to come out the front door,” Chategris continued, “if they don’t, then we torch the building.”

“It’s important that we draw them out, we don’t go in,” Arcos said.  “We want to be out in the open, not in an enclosed space with a bunch of ninjas.”

There was a moment of silence, where neither cat nor bear said anything. 

“Fight like your life depends on it,” Arcos said.

Chategris finished for him.  “Because it does.”

***

The battle couldn’t have lasted more than 20 minutes, at the absolute most.  The Phoenix figured it was probably more like 10.  Time seemed to have slowed down and sped up at the same time. 

Everything had gone according to plan.  Except that each of the ninjas was worth ten Grey Cats.  That made them grossly outnumbered.

The fighting skills of the people…creatures…things that came out of the beautiful old building were incredible.  The first wave of fighters out of the building were the bug-eyed ninjas Chategris had complained about.  They swarmed like silent hornets from the front door, so fast, and so many of them, that the front line could not keep them contained in the small space of the doorway.  Quickly they’d made it to the second line.  Shots from the archers took them down continually, but they seemed to be multiplying.  Phoenix, with a perfect vantage point at the fourth floor fire escape of the apartments next to the headquarters, had pelted them with her bullets, hitting them at a rate that she was proud of.  It was only when they started to make their way toward the fire escapes, that Phoenix noticed when one was hit, sparks flew before the ninja went down.  

A large, skeleton mutant, some sort of animal, she guessed it was the dog, was out the door next.  He was not what she expected.  His appearance was something truly out of a nightmare.  When he was hit with a projectile, it bounced off the protruding boney structures.  He didn’t seem to even notice the hits.  If a bullet came too close to a part that could hurt him, he simply moved, without missing a beat in the one on one fight in which he was engaged.

 A huge fish with robotic legs, just as Chategris had described was next.  He worked his body in a way that was amazing, especially considering the legs didn’t belong to him.  He spun and kicked, crushing whoever happened to be in his way.

Then a young woman leapt out.  She was wearing a skin tight black suit, with silver armor.  Her hair was black, and shaved underneath and died a hydrogen peroxide yellow.  She wielded a sword, and with a deadly accuracy began chopping down Grey Cats.

Arcos did not order a retreat until the bug-eyed ninjas sprouted four arms.  It was then that Phoenix made the connection between the sparks when they were hit with bullets.  They were robots.  The Kraang had ninja robots!  They had brain riding robots, business suit men robots, and now four-armed-ninja robots!

The archers stayed in their places, providing cover for the retreated Grey Cats.  Because of their position as the last to leave, Phoenix could see the losses that Chategris’ people had obtained.  The ground was littered with the bodies of mutants, people whom she knew would not get a proper sort of treatment in death.  While the number of black ninja outfits lying on the ground was not insubstantial, it was nothing compared the mutants lying about them.

When the archers got back to their fall back location, there was hardly anyone left. 

The Children of the Phoenix were there, and all of them broke into smiles when they saw her.  She ran to her kids, embracing and kissing each one, tears in her eyes.  “Are you hurt?” she kept repeating, “are you hurt?”

“You have to get back to the cargo bay,” Arcos said.  “We’ve already moved all of the injured that couldn’t get their on their own.”  He looked at his sister, “You get her there. We’ll be behind you.”

Phoenix picked up her two messenger bags and Medusa nodded, “Off we go, Mama,” she said quietly, coiling around her mother and darting off.

“Medusa, are you hurt?” Phoenix’s voice trembled.  “You have to tell me if you’re hurt.”

“You need to help the people at the cargo bay.”  Her voice was firm.  “Mama, they’re hurt.”

Phoenix took a deep breath, and tried to calm herself down.  She was more panicked now than she was in the middle of the fighting.  She softened her eyes, tried to see the glow that wasn’t a glow, but being held by Medusa, she could only see little parts of her.  That doesn’t matter, she thought herself, as she felt the tingling in her hands start.  It quickly gathered force, almost making her hands burn, before she placed her palms on her daughter’s body, and began to let the tingling light into her.

They arrived at the cargo bay, and the scene that met them was the worst thing that Phoenix had ever seen.  Medusa dropped her in her midst of bodies lying about in various degrees of dying.  She had to take a deep breath, close her eyes, and collect herself before she could do anything.

She turned to Medusa, “Are you hurt?” she commanded.  “I am not doing anything with anyone, until I help you!”

Medusa turned, to show a section of her body, and blinked when she looked down at it.  She looked up at her mother in wonder, “Not anymore,” she whispered.  There was nothing there.

She looked around and realized that she was going to have to do triage.  “Is Chategris here?” she cringed as she said it.  After her last stance of helping the worst hurt first, she hated to change her strategy.  But it did no good if the Grey Cats fell into chaos because they had no leader, and she didn’t know what happened to Klashtooth or Razz.

”Chategris!?” Medusa yelled.  “Are you here?”

Medusa doesn’t know either, Phoenix thought.  Did he even make it back to the fall back point, much less to the cargo bay?  “Klashtooth!?” she yelled.  “Razz?!”

“Over here!” she heard the rabbit reply.  She made her way around the cargo bay, to one of the rooms.  It was the one with the pool table, which was now covered in blood, as Chategris lay upon it, unconscious. 

“Are you hurt?” she asked Klashtooth.

He shook his head, “Not a scratch.”

At least there is one I don’t have to worry about, the thought was derisive.  Then, telling Medusa and Klashtooth to strip Chategris naked, she began to tend to him.  She washed him and stitched him and bandaged him and put the tingly light into him for she didn’t know how long.  It seemed like he had a wound on every part of his body, and it took her forever, but then no time at all, to finish with him.

She was then out of the pool room, leaving Klashtooth with him to be his nurse, and out into the bay proper to deal with her other patients.

As soon as Arcos and Aries arrived, she stopped what she was doing and demanded of them to know of their hurts.  Like Medusa, they tried to fob her off, and like Medusa, she had been emphatic.   She dealt with both of their bodies before she would touch another Grey Cat. 

She was not able to perform the same feat she had with Medusa, healing someone wholly, or even with as partially had she been able to heal her children in the past.  There were times when she saw no visible improvement at all after administering her healing energy.  She simply kept at it, until she was finished, and exhausted.

She look around, and found her children on a couch, each looking very grave.  “I’m done,” she said with finality.  “We’re going home.”

Several Grey Cats raised their voices at her announcement, but she completely ignored them.  Her children rose from their seats, and followed her out of the cargo bay.

“I don’t think I can jump the roofs, Mama,” Arcos said quietly. 

“Then we’ll walk home,” she answered with a soft voice.  “We are not staying here.”

Arcos nodded, and the four of them trod home, on the sidewalk, all the way to haunted warehouse, in silence.

It was during this silence, when no one said a word, and her mind was too tired to turn off, and too tired to be productive, that she realized from her vantage point in the battle, she had been able to see everything.  She had not seen any turtles.


	32. Chapter 32

For the next several days after their battle, the Phoenix played nursemaid to her three children.  All had sustained injuries, all had worked harder than she, all had been in more danger than she.  She had to make it up to them.  She had to make it up to them that she hadn’t done a better job protecting them.  She had to make it up to them that she hadn’t had them train harder, to be better prepared.  She had to make it up to them that she had allowed them to participate in this crazy escapade in the first place.  She gave instructions to the unhurt Grey Cats who urged her to come to the cargo bay, and usually added, “Well if someone would have learned how to do this, you wouldn’t have this problem, would you?”

It left the three of her kids time to sleep.  Sleep brought on various nightmares that none of them wanted to discuss. When they weren’t sleeping, it left them time to think.

Medusa who was feeling the best of the three, would move slowly around the warehouse, like she did in the winter.  She made three tours of the floor before coming to her mother in the living room and asking, “How did Crevan get you to come out to the battle?”

“He told me you were about to fight the ninjas that have been plaguing New York.  I couldn’t very well let you do that alone, now could I?”

“He didn’t tell you how we decided to fight?” Arcos asked, straightening himself up on the couch and wincing as he did so.

“No,” Phoenix drawled.

“They were going in without a plan,” Medusa explained.  “So we left.”

“Crevan came after us,” Aries said, “and told us Chategris wanted to hear our strategy.  We told Crevan to go get you.”

“Crevan neglected to tell me that part of it.”

“When we said we weren’t going to fight without a strategy, no one said anything, Mama,” Medusa looked confused.  “Even Razz.  They all were silent and stared at Chategris.”  Her tongue flicked out.  “I thought they were our friends,” she said, “but they would have followed him in there and they all would have died.”

“Every last one of them,” Arcos muttered.

“I thought they were our friends,” Medusa said again.

“No, Curly Que,” Phoenix shook her head emphatically.  “They are not our friends.  We are their friends.”

“What’s the difference?” Aries asked.

“The difference is, we care about them.  They don’t care about us.”

“But,” Medusa shook her head.  “They bring you gifts, and they spend time with us.  They want to be with us.  They say so!”

“None of that makes them our friends,” she answered gently.  “That makes them our allies.  Chategris is a warlord.”  She leaned against the arm of the couch, and reached out to stroke Aires between his horns.  “All of his people are expendable.  Every one of them.  They all know this.”

“Nobody’s got anybody’s back,” Arcos rolled his shoulders.

“No, Teddy Bear,” Phoenix sounded sad.  “They don’t.  They don’t have each other’s, and they don’t have ours.”

“Then why do we have theirs?” Medusa raised her voice.

Phoenix took a deep breath.   “Because it is the kind thing to do.”

“This is what people do to you when you’re kind?”  Medusa raised herself up, towering over the three of them.  “They use you, and lull you into thinking they care, and then throw you to the wolves?”

Phoenix looked hurt.  “Sometimes, Curly Que,” she told her.

“Then why do we do it?” she demanded.

“Because being kind is important,” Phoenix’s voice was soft.

“What good is being kind when you get used?”

“No one can use you unless you let them,” Phoenix told her.  “I am not used by Chategris or any of the Grey Cats.  Whatever happens between them and I is all under my control.  At any time, I can tell them no.”  She spread her arms wide, “I am doing right now.”

Medusa glared at her. 

“I can say no, because they are **not** our friends,” she explained.  “What I do for them is out of kindness.”

Medusa turned away from her and began to circle the warehouse slowly again.

 

***

 

Aries would doze, and then be started awake by a sound or a touch, thinking it was Myra.  The look on her face when Chategris had ordered her away hung on the back of his eyelids whenever they closed.  She had obeyed him without question.  He had offered to take her with him.  He had all but asked her to come, and she’d decided to follow Chategris to certain death. 

He hadn’t gone to find her when they came back to the rooftop to speak with the leader of the Grey Cats.  She had woven her way through, to try to get back to him, but he didn’t turn around, even after seeing her out of the corner of his eye.  Someone had sent her back, he wasn’t sure who.  I couldn’t have been near her then, he said to himself.  Not after knowing…knowing what? 

He wasn’t even sure what it was.  Whatever it was, it made him immensely sad, almost to the point of tears.  He had to knit his brows on more than one occasion to dry his eyes.  Had he genuinely thought she would come with him?  Why would he not?  She had encouraged him to take Chategris up on his invitation of joining the Grey Cats.  If he had done so, would that mean he would follow him to his certain demise?  He had never thought of Chategris as a warlord, but now…The leader of the Grey Cats was going to hear none of their arguments.  Now that Aries thought about it, he couldn’t recall anyone, except his mother, ever arguing with Chategris.

Even his own mother, who ruled her household with an iron fist, did not expect explicit obedience to her commands without any type of argument.  Of course, all the other mothers he knew were on the TV, but surely TV mothers couldn’t be that different from real mothers.  They argued all the time, just as his family argued all the time; over curfews, over chores, over dinner, over training, over privileges, over punishments, over recompense, over forgiveness.  As The Children of the Phoenix had gotten older, they had won more and more of the arguments, not by brute force, but by the logic of the argument given.  If their reasons were better than her reasons, the children usually won.  There were no hard feelings.  There were no snarls.  There were no…nothing.  After the argument, it was over.  And that was that.

Now, he would concede that his mother would claim that there is a time and place for arguing, but would right before a battle not be a place to argue?  If, within one move that the group made, everyone’s lives were in danger, would that not be the time to argue?  He tried to think back to their playing superhero, had they argued?  Had she let them argue?

He couldn’t recall any arguments.  But then, he didn’t recall her giving orders, not the same way as Chategris.  The Phoenix, the vigilante, the healer, conceded to a better plan immediately.  There was simply no argument.  One of them said, “X!” and it was better than her “Y!” they did it.   It hadn’t occurred to him that life could happen any other way.

Myra’s face came to his mind again, soft, golden brown fur, ears on the side of her head, coming down like hair and resting on her shoulders, soft, large brown eyes, soft, large…he sighed.  What was the incentive of staying with The Grey Cats?  If one had no autonomy, if one could not put one’s thoughts into words, because there was no reason to do so, why would one live that way?  He had been with Myra longer than he had ever been with anyone else.  He had been loyal to Myra, and she…he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths through his nose to keep the tears away.

 

***

 

Arcos drew. It gave him something to concentrate on, and it gave his mind a place to put all of his conflicting ideas and feelings.  He pulled his piece of pastels across the paper, making a rendering of the medicinal garden in a past year.   He always started with the juniper bush at the back, and had to resist putting the frosted blue berries on it.  It only bore fruit in the winter, when it was the only thing in the garden that produced anything.

The garden was a stark contrast to the battle they’d fought at the pretty building.  He wanted to call it bank, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do so.  The building was very pretty, so that was its name.   The garden was full of light, and green, growing things.  In the middle of summer it bore fruits and vegetables that they wouldn’t have been able to obtain any other way.  It gave them medicine that healed their hurts and their bodies.  And it gave them a connection to their brother and sister, even if Aetos was not in any of their memories. 

The catnip patch was next in his work, tall stalks of dark green filled to the brim with tiny leaves, whose essence brought calm or sleep to those who knew how to draw it out.  He’d never really cared for catnip tea, which was how his mother usually administered it.  It always seemed a little too close to cannibalism, even if the medicinal patch of catnip was on the other side of the garden for Ailurosa’s grave.

He’d been taken by surprise by Chategris’ fighting tactics.  Go in and kill people?  Who did that?  Is that really how he went in to all of his fights?  He pulled the dark green pastel crayon to make the ivy wall across his paper.  Splashes of lighter greens, of yellow-green, and yellow were spotted on to show the light shining through the leaves.

Arcos had fought for his life in the battle.  A battle.  A real battle, like the kind they have in a war.  But then, they were at war, weren’t they?  They were guerilla soldiers, fighting an alien invasion. 

 

***

 

You shouldn’t be tired, Phoenix derided herself.  You came out of that fiasco without a scratch. 

But she was tired, and she knew why.  Every night since the battle, she’d awoke in a cold sweat, her heart thumping from a nightmare.  She dreamt of breakdancing fish stomping on her children like turning grapes to wine.  She dreamt of skeleton dogs with great claws cutting them up into little tiny pieces, and then eating them.  She dreamt of girls with bad haircuts decapitating them.  She dreamt of bug eyed black ninja robots with four arms stabbing them over and over and over again, until they bled out on the floor.  She dreamt of turtles doing all three things, along with being clubbed to death with nun chucks.

In each of these dreams, she was unable to get to her children.  Sometimes she would be in a cage.  Sometimes she was a window or glass door and could not figure out how to get into the room.   Sometimes the fight was in a cage, and she had no weapons, or no ammo, and couldn’t figure out how to get the cage open. 

She awoke from each one with a sense of a mother’s helplessness.  She would get up from her bed in the dark of night, now too awake to sleep, and creep to her children’s bedrooms.  Slowly opening each door, she checked on them, to make sure they were still there, to make sure they were breathing, like babies who have just moved from their parents’ bed to their own crib.

After checking up on them, she would still be unable to sleep, so she tossed and turned in her bed and her thoughts would drift to the Turtles.  They weren’t at the building with the stained glass windows and the large clock.  They were somewhere else.  There was more than one headquarters for these ninjas, ninjas made by aliens to do…who knew what?

When she caught herself thinking in such way, she would consciously think about the voice.  She laid in bed and tried to hear it, to stretch out her sense of sound as far as she could to catch it.  Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t.  It would be far away, as if taunting her.  She would reach for it, with a psychic hand trying to draw it closer to her ear.  If she managed to hook it, it would rush in on her in an instant, and the deep, melody would give her something to concentrate on.  She would try to make out the words, but none ever became clear, it was only a murmur that eventually she fell asleep to. If she didn’t hook it, it would fade away, as if the owner was walking away from her.

After a week of being at home, and becoming tired of nightmares and turtles, and voices, she decided it was time to check on the Grey Cats.  She hadn’t gotten any word that Chategris had expired, so she guessed he was still alive.

When she got there, she found that he was, sitting on a large, throne-like armchair, his fur thin and scraggly.  “You have come to check on your patients, finally, eh ma Cherie?” he asked in a poor humor.

“Yes,” she answered, as if he had said it pleasantly.  “And you are my first one.”  She checked him over, and was quite surprised at how well he was doing.  “You are obviously following my directions.”

“Why would I not?” he asked.  He shifted his position and winced.  “When will I be better?”

“When you’re better,” she replied, laying her hands on one of his larger wounds and sending the warm, tingly light into it.

“That’s not an answer,” he snapped.

“It is the only answer I can give you,” she took her hands off of him.  “I can do many things, Chategris.  Telling the future isn’t one of them.”

He turned his head and gave her a sidelong look.  “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t believe me?” she laughed.

He just looked at her.

 Had she heard him right?  “If I could tell the future, do you think I would have let anyone into that fiasco that got us all in this state?!”  She could feel her face turning red with anger.

The leader of the Grey Cats stared at her, his face in a snarl, and said nothing.

“We were slaughtered out there,” she continued, her voice almost cracking.  “We didn’t take down one living creature.  And how many of you did they take down?”

“What you see here,” he answered through gritted teeth, “is what is left of my people.”

It was a paltry number.  Where the cargo bay used to be brimming with people, both on the inside and the outside, there were now wide open spaces.  The smell of animal, of barnyard, was now stale and old, even after only a week.  The mutants about her lay in various states of healing or dying, depending on their wounds.  She wondered where they put the ones who died, and then shoved the thought out of her mind.

“Do you not think,” she turned back to him from looking around, “that I would have done something more if I could have?”

“You could have!” his voice echoed through the empty bay, and he leaned forward in the chair.  Phoenix had never heard him raise his voice, and the thought that he would do so to her shook her.  “You could have helped us to win!”

“I did what I could!” she thundered back, leaning forward toward him in what she hoped was a brave manner.

“You are a witchdoctor!” he yelled.  “There is something more you could have done than throw pebbles at robots!”

She took a step back, and her eyes went wide.  “You think I’m a witchdoctor?”

“I know what a mamba can do!” he cried.  “You could have done something, **something** to cause us to win!”

“You think I’m a witchdoctor?” she said again, shaking her head.  “That is how you think of me?”

“I know what a mamba is,” his voice lowered.  “I know what a mamba can do.”

She stood up straight, putting on the most snide face she consciously could.  “I hope you can do what a mamba can do, then,” she vented.  “Because this witchdoctor isn’t doing it anymore.”

She turned on her heel, and without looking back, walked calmly out of the cargo bay.

 


	33. Chapter 33

It was still afternoon when she left the cargo bay, and the Phoenix didn’t feel like going straight home. 

How dare he! she fumed.  A witchdoctor!  A witchdoctor?!

Her jaw began to ache from it being clenched.  She took a deep breath to relax.

Like I can cast spells and make things happen, the superstitious dimwit! 

Did he really think, for all these years, that she was a witchdoctor?  That she healed people by dancing around in her home chanting spells and speaking to spirits?  Did he think she performed exorcisms when he wasn’t looking, waving her herbs in the air, using their smoke the drive demons away?  That is fine, she mused.  He can think me some sort of sorceress.  Good riddance to him.

She thought about the little old man that wasn’t there by the Asian store, and the great firebird that wrapped its wings and its fire around her.  Did they make her witchdoctor?

 No, she told herself!  They told me what I already knew, I just needed to be reminded.  If I know it, then everyone else knows it.  They can be reminded that they know if they want! 

She was nothing special.  She did nothing special.  She did what anyone in her position would do…didn’t she?

She wandered on the sidewalk in an effort to calm down, taking a circuitous route back the haunted warehouse.   Slowly her heart rate went down and her breath became more normal.

She came down the street where they had moved the manhole cover to enter the sewers last year, with all the rats.  She stopped and looked at it, tilting her head and pursing her lips.

The first times she’d heard the voice, the deep one, whose words she couldn’t make out, she’d experienced the sewers.  Maybe, maybe she was supposed to go into the sewers, maybe the voice was down there somewhere.

The thought seemed silly enough that she laughed out loud.  But she wasn’t ready to go home yet, and home was close by.  She bent down and pried the manhole cover open with a clang.  Then she descended down the ladder until she was enveloped in near darkness.  She got her flashlight out of her messenger bag, and shone it down the tunnel.  She walked the same way she had the year before, the warm smell of the sewer lifting from the floor to her nostrils.

She walked for a ways, and decided to go down a different tunnel than the one that lead her to the big open space she was in last year.  She wasn’t ready to go back there, and if that crazy rat man was the voice she was hearing, she’d rather not meet the voice’s owner. 

She heard only the dripping of water, and it was not the same dripping she heard in her visions.  Perhaps if she listened hard enough the voice would come back and she could follow it.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose and out her mouth.

“Eeek.”

She opened her eyes, and look forward.  She could only see what her flashlight was shining on, which was, at the moment, the dirty floor.

“Eeek.”

She heard it again, in her physical ear, not in her head.  It most definitely was **not** the voice she was listening for.  She shined the light around, and followed the soft, “eek”s until she came to the tiny body of a rat lying down at the edge of the tunnel.  She bent down, and put her flashlight on the ground so it shined on it.

It was just a plain rat, grey with a pink nose, and a pink tail, and pink feet.  When she softened her eyes, to see the glow that was not a glow that emanated from everything, she saw very little of it around the rat.  It was as if it was being suck in from the rat’s center instead of exuding out as it should.  She picked the rodent up, and held its limp, warm body in her hands.  She could feel its little heart beating against her palm.  She rubbed it gently, and as she did, she gave it some of the tingly light.  The thought and look of the process, when she was self-aware enough to watch it, never failed to fascinate her.  Everything she looked at gave off the glow that wasn’t a glow, a type of shimmering in the air that indicated its existence.  The tingly light that came out of her hands, almost of its own accord, had a different kind of glow to it, an almost light, the shimmer from it was white in color, but translucent.  It did not look like it felt.  It was a sheet, one continuous emanation of light, while it felt as if ants or spiders were coming out of her palms through her pores and into the pores of the creature she was giving it to.  She knew it wasn’t hers, that she didn’t make the light.  The light came from somewhere else, the same place as the great firebird that had come to her all those years ago, the same place as the voice that was not her voice, the same place as the poetry.

A gift from the Universe, she thought errantly.

The tingling stopped in her hands, and she held the rat for a while longer.  She smiled ironically.  “Medusa would eat you,” she said to it softly.  “And here I am trying to help you heal yourself.”

The rat raised its head, as if it understood her, and then wiggled to get down.  She put it on the ground gently, and it ran off down the tunnel.  She watched it, the soft glow that was not a glow fading into the dark of the tunnel only shortly after she could no longer see its physical body.

She picked up her flashlight and followed the direction the rat went, feeling rather content, even though the air was clammy and the smell warm and rotted.  It was a…unique…contrast, she thought.  She turned a corner, and shone her light on several rats eating some garbage in the tunnel.  The all looked at her, squeaked loudly, and then ran off farther down the tunnel.  The contented feeling faded slightly, the glow that was not a glow disappearing with her change in mood.

Should I go on? She asked the voice that was not her voice.

She heard nothing in reply.

She grew increasingly uneasy as she stood in the dark tunnel, deep in the sewer, away from any way out that she knew of.  A few rats, brown and gray, chittered beside her and ran forward a little, but were still well within the beam of her flashlight.

“Do I follow you?” she asked out loud.

The rats waited.

“You know your life is getting really weird when you start talking to rats, and they answer you,” she smiled. 

She stepped lightly, following the rats as they moved down the tunnel.  They would move to the end of where the beam of light shone, and then stop for her to get close to them, and then run to the end of the beam again.

She enjoyed the game.  It reminded her of the types of games her children had played with her when they were toddlers.    A vivid image of Ailurosa laughing, a tiny little kitten, running just out of her reach.  ‘Catch me, Mama!’ she’d cried happily.  ‘Catch me!’ before she ran off, again just out of her mother’s deliberately too slow reach.

She’d played that game with all four of them, when they were little.  No, she reminded herself, she did not play with Medusa.  Medusa did not unwrap from her unless she was physically forced to, even if it meant not eating, or if she had to go to the toilet.  Phoenix chuckled as she remember the feel of warm snake pee running down her arm.  My, that girl had been hard to potty train!

The rats continued to play the game with her, leading her deeper and deeper down the tunnels, the smell of decay becoming rank, and then fading to a stale stench.  She saw a light in the distance, and followed the rats to an open space.  She turned off her flashlight and looked around, confused.

The room was huge, obviously a former hub for the working of the sewer system.  It had florescent lights hanging from the ceiling.  Along one side of the huge room was an array of tables, with what looked like medical equipment.  She walked over to it, and examined what was on it.  Beakers, a makeshift Bunsen burner, a bucket of water, a container of...mutagen.  At the far end of the table was a body of a rat.  She walked over it, and covered her mouth with her hand.  It wasn’t a rat.  It was some sort of caricature of a rat.  It was bent into a fetal like position, with too many legs, and each leg having too many or too few toes.

She turned to go back the way she’d come, the content feeling now a million miles away.  There were rats all over the room, sitting on their haunches, staring at her with black, beady eyes.

“I’m going to go now,” she said out loud, and began edging toward the tunnel.  She turned to make a mad dash for the tunnel, when a huge rat came to the entry, blocking her way.  She backed up, catching her breath.  It was as big as a horse, and all of the skin was gone from its face, leaving at the front part of its skull exposed.  Its teeth were huge fangs, the roots showing in the skeleton muzzle.  The rest of the body matched the size of the massive skeletal head, but its tiny ears looked out of place.  Its red glowing eyes made up for that fact, however. 

“Very good, Caligula,” said a smooth voice that made Phoenix’s stomach drop.  She recognized it, and it was not the voice she’d been hoping to find.

“No,” she moaned, now backing up into the room.

It was the crazy rat man.  His awful pink eyes were covered with a bandage, but the rest of him was as she remembered.  His skin was puckered, his gaunt body tall and straight.  He wore the big, black sun hat she’d seen before, and without the glow that wasn’t a glow, she knew the big, black cloud still wove in and out of his skull.

“Yes,” he moved toward her slowly, and all the rats seemed to close in on her at the same time.   “You are a gift, woman.  Twice you’ve come to me, and now you’ve come to me exactly when I need you.”

“Me?” her voice was unnaturally high.

“Yes,” he said again.  His smooth voice was unnaturally calm, and he walked toward her with confidence, a demented smile on his face.  “You have come just in time, my dear.”

“I was just leaving,” she said quietly, and tried to walk to the side, but a wall of rats blocked her way.

“No,” he reached up and stroked the giant rat, and another one came in behind him.  

“Yes!” In a panic, she jumped over the rats that were blocking her way, landing in the middle of them.  They began to launch themselves at her, and she batted them away as she ran.  She got to the entry, and thought she could skid underneath a third giant rat that emerged there.  As she bent her knees and twisted her body sideways to slide, the rat reached down with both of its hand-like front paws, and lifted her up in the air, holding her off of the floor.

“No, my dear,” he shook his head, his arm still on Caligula.  “You will stay right here.”

 

***

 

Aries shuffled into the kitchen, the light of mid-morning shining bright into the warehouse.  Their mother hadn’t woken them up, with either the smell of their coffee brewing or a gentle shake.  He went to the coffee pot, and started the coffee, then turned to his mother’s bed, on the other side of the living room, and noticed it was made and empty.

She hadn’t come home before he and his siblings had gone to bed, and it didn’t look like she’d come home at all last night.  Arcos and Medusa emerged from their bedrooms at the sound of the coffee dripping from the machine and the smell wafting through the air.

“Where’s Mama?” Arcos asked, stretching.

“Why didn’t Mama wake us up?” Medusa asked at the same time.

Aries shrugged.  “I don’t think she came home last night.”

“That’s not good,” Medusa’s voice was ominous.

“She was probably too tired to come home after tending to all the wounded at the cargo bay,” Arcos said.  “I bet she has to do something to almost everyone there, and lots of them are down for the count.  A little later, we’ll go get her.”

“We can bring her a cup of tea,” Medusa suggested.  “The way she likes it.”


	34. Chapter 34

Phoenix woke up and found herself in the same position in which she’d fallen asleep.  Her arms were tied behind her with a rope, and the other end of the rope was tied to a pipe on the floor, not giving her enough slack to stand up.  Not that she could if there was enough slack.  Her legs were also tied to the pipe with another length of rope.  Her back hurt.  Her shoulders hurt.  Her arms hurt.  And she was thirsty.

A little gray rat was sitting on its haunches next to her, regarding her.

If you are the rat I helped and I wasn’t tied up, she directed the thought to the rat, as if she could speak to it telepathically, I’d take you home and feed you a live to my daughter, you little…rat!

It “eek”ed in the same way it had in the tunnel when she’d first seen it.

She heard movement at the table on the adjacent wall, and looked to see the rat man, the Rat King, he called himself, bending over the Bunsen burner.

“The Rat King?” she had said when he first told her.  “You don’t want me, your majesty,” she pleaded.  “I’m definitely not royal material.”

“You be first…,” he had replied.

She hadn’t liked the sound of that.  The first what?  The first to die?  The first to be eaten by those giant rats? 

“Your DNA will bring forth a new era, an era which should have rightfully started millennia ago.”

“You don’t want my DNA,” she had said quickly.  “It’s not good.  It’s full of recessives.  I had red in my hair when I was younger.  My eyes are green.  I have a small nose.”  She wracked her brain for recessive traits, “I can curl my tongue.  I have attached earlobes. I don’t have mid-digit hair!”  Her voice had risen steadily at his unresponsiveness.

“Perfect, my dear,” he had replied.  

At the moment, though, The Rat King was working, with the focus of a scientist, and she doubted that he would even notice her here unless she brought her to his attention.  “Excuse me, your highness,” she asked, hoping flattery, using what she assumed was a self-assumed title, might help her case.  It certainly couldn’t hurt.  “Can I have some water, please?”

The Rat King stood up, but did not look in her direction.  Instead, it seemed he was looking straight ahead, his blindfolded eyes facing the wall.

The gray rat squeaked again.

“Of course,” he said finally.  He produced a water bottle from under the table, and walked over to her, as if he could see even with the blindfold on, and held the bottle to her lips.

She drank greedily, but after a few gulps, the taste of the water hit her.  It was awful, a foul tasting something.  Had he gotten the water from the sewer itself?  She coughed, and turned her head, water pouring over her front before he tilted the bottle back up.

“My little Tacitus seems to be very fond of you,” the Rat King said.  He reached toward her and took a lock of her hair in his scarred hand, wrapped in bandages.  He rubbed it between his fingers, as if feeling for the quality of a cloth.  “I am not surprised he is,” he said.  “After all, you saved his life.”

So it was the same rat!  “How…how do you know that?”

“I know all!” his voice grandiose.  “I am a god, forced underneath the city by a vermin that needs to be cleansed from the Earth.”  His bandaged eyes seemed to regard her.  “I know who you are,” he said.  “I have seen you throughout the city, through the eyes of my precious rats.  I have seen what you can do, and I have seen to whom you have done it.”

His words echoed too closely to Chategris’ not even 24 hours before.  “I am not a witchdoctor,” she breathed.

“A witchdoctor?”  He laughed, his mouth opened wide, showing his missing and decayed teeth.  “Oh no, my dear.  You are so much more than a witchdoctor, a savage who pretends to play with the forces of nature.”  He stood up, and went back to the table, leaving the little gray rat with her.  “You are an energy manipulator, one who can influence the electromagnetic structure of electrons, keep the electron in its wave state, and not its particle state, allowing it to change the living force it encounters.  You have a very special gift.”

“It isn’t a gift,” she tried to explain.  “Anyone can do it.  They just have to be taught how, that’s all.”

“But they do not know how to do it,” he said calmly.  “You do.”  He turned to her again, and she wondered if he could see through the bandages.  “You are the Phoenix.  And with your help, we will rise from the ashes, to create a new civilization.  A civilization where rats are supreme, and I am their King!”

This guy is crazier than I thought, she told herself, pulling on the rope that was binding her hands.  She noticed, that while she was bound, she hadn’t been stripped of her weapons, only of her messenger bags.  He’s downright demented! 

He walked over to her holding up a syringe.

“Please,” she begged.  “I am no good to you.  I don’t know what you’re talking about, with electrons and particles…”  She shook her head as he came closer.  “I have children that I need to care for,” she said anything that came into her brain.  “I’m—“

“Yes,” he interrupted her, bending down so he was at her eye level.  She looked at his bandaged eyes, not sure where else she was supposed to look at him.  A white rat, with pink eyes crawled onto his shoulder.  “Your children.  The Children of the Phoenix.”

How did all these people know about her and her kids, and she didn’t know about any of them?!

“You know full well they do not need you to care for them.  They are full grown, beginning to have their own lives, without you.”

She gasped at the words, and tears came to her eyes.  She had thought that thought so many times, but she had never said it out loud, never heard it said by another out loud.  Hearing this mad man say it stung her like a slap in the face.

“But I,” he reached out his free hand and stroked her cheek.  “I have need of you.”  He stroked her neck, and then down her arm.  She shivered, and then froze when he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand so her arm was straight.  Then he held up the syringe.

“No!”  She began to wiggle with all of her might, wiggling was all she could do.

The huge rat, the one he had called Caligula, came over and grabbed her arm, stepping on her chest and forcing her to lie on the floor.  Its other front paw held her head, to keep her from thrashing. 

   “There is no need to be afraid.  I will not hurt you.”  He spoke in a soothing voice.  “I can promise you that.”  He stroked her head, like he had stroked the head Caligula.  “These were ordinary rats, Caligula and his two brothers, until I injected them with my mutagenic growth serum.”  He moved a stray strand of her hair that fallen in her face.  “They are magnificent creatures, are they not?”

He waited as if he expected her answer.  She only stared at the red rat eyes in looming above her. 

“But, they are not what I need.  They are not soldiers.”  He stopped stroking her head, and took the syringe out, placing it on her inner elbow.  “But, I know now what to do.”  He pushed the needle into her vein, easily found on her pale skin.  She gasped, and tried to jerk, but Caligula held her motionless.  “I have found the secret, and your cells, with their knowledge of regeneration, will perfect my serum.”  He put a vial into the connector of the needle, and it began to spurt with blood.

Phoenix began to feel faint, she wasn’t sure if was the amount of blood that crazy man was taking from her, or if it was fear.  “Why do you need a serum?” she asked.

“I am going to make an army, an army of rat people.”  He laughed, “But I cannot infect all of humanity.  I am only one person, after all.  But with my rats, with my army of rat people,” he turned to her again, his face fierce, “I can.”  He picked up one of her blood vials.  “With your cell memory, I can create a mutagen that will pass like a virus to anyone who is bitten by one of my rat people.  The mutagenetic process will spread faster than the Bubonic Plague, changing every last human being into a rat!”

He took a total of 8 vials, carrying them carefully back to the table.  “When my General realizes where he truly belongs and comes to me, I will begin the invasion process.  I will be king!  I will have my General,” he then pointed to Phoenix, “and my Healer underneath me, and I will be truly invincible!”

This sounded like something out of a children’s television cartoon.  This man couldn’t be serious.  “I will heal nothing for you,” she spat, her fear finally turning to anger.

He laughed, and it was an awful, crazy laugh.  “Oh, but my dear,” he said, still chuckling, “you will be one of the first of my rat people, once I have perfected the serum.  You will be like a queen among men, and you will be under my control.  The three of us will rule the world!”

***

“There isn’t going to be any tea left in there if you don’t hold the cup up,” Arcos told his brother.

“Why am I holding it?”

“Because you are,” Medusa said. 

“You should be holding,” Aries held it out to her.

“We should have a travel mug,” Medusa replied.

“We’ve never travelled with a cup of tea before,” Arcos said.  “Why would we have a travel mug?”

“For times like this,” Aries muttered.

They arrived at the cargo bay, the mug now half empty, and saw no Phoenixes.  Chategris, however, was sitting on a large armchair, like a throne, and scowled when they came in.  “Qu’est que vous-voulez?” <What do you want?> he asked.

“Where is our mother?” Arcos asked in English.

“J’ne sais pas,” <I don’t know> he answered.  “She left her with her fur all ruffled.”

“She doesn’t have fur,” Aries muttered.

“Where did she go?” Arcos demanded.

“How should I know?” Chategris said.  “If she did not go home, I do not know where she went.”

“Medusa?” Razz came over to the group, a smile on his face.

Medusa put her hand up in his direction, and physically turned her entire upper body away from him.  “Unless you know where my mother is, I have nothing to say to you.”

The lizard’s face dropped and shoulders slumped. 

“How long has she been gone?” Arcos asked.

Chategris shrugged.  “She left her about this time yesterday.”

“Yesterday?!” Aries cried.

“We need to go and find her,” Medusa said to her brothers, heading toward the bay doors. 

Her brothers followed her, and a little ways off, they heard scampering behind them.  Turning, they saw Toaster and Dezi.  Both had taken a beating in the battle, in fact, Toaster had lost half of an ear.  They were not coming very fast, they couldn’t, but they waved and called for the Children of the Phoenix to wait up.

“We want to help,” they were both breathless.  “We want to help to find her.”

“Aren’t you going to get in trouble with Chategris?” Aries’ voice was snide.

“He’s not in any position to be trouble to anyone,” Dezi smiled as she said it. 

“How are we going to find her?” Medusa asked.

“We’ll sweep the whole haunted warehouse district,” Arcos said, “we’ll split up and—“

“Why don’t we just smell for her?” Toaster asked, his face confused.

“What?” Aries blinked.

“She went that way,” Dezi pointed to a side street that they had already passed.  “We can just follow her scent.”

Medusa, Aries, and Arcos looked at each other.  “That’s a better plan than sweeping the district,” Arcos said nodded sagely.

Dezi and Toaster said that her trail was fading with age, and often they would stop confused.  “Are you sure she went this way?” one would ask.

“It smells that way to me,” the other would answer.

“Me too, but it doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense about it?” Medusa asked.

“She seemed to have just wandered around the streets.  She heads toward home, and then away, and then toward it again.”

“She’s done that before,” Aries told them, “when she is upset, sometimes she goes for a walk.”

“She was upset when she left yesterday,” Dezi said with a nod.    She sniffed the air, and pointed, “She went this way.”

“You can smell her?” Aries asked.  “Really?”

“Of course,” Toaster said, sniffing the air himself.  “Can’t you?”

Aries shook his head.

Medusa flicked her tongue, and then shook her head.

Arcos sniffed, his muzzle in the air, and then turned to Toaster, “What are you smelling for?”

“The Phoenix,” Dezi said.  “Just the normal way she smells.”

“You do know what she smells like, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Arcos said gruffly.  He sniffed the air again.  “But not out here.”

“You’re just smelling for how she normally smells,” Dezi explained.  “You pick that smell out from all the other smells.”

“Plus she’s the only human for quite a ways around,” Toaster added.  “It makes her easier to find.”

Arcos sniffed again, and then shook his head.  “I smell a smorgousboard of things.”

Toaster pointed to a manhole cover laying on the street, leaving a gaping opening in the asphalt.  “She went down there.”

Medusa flicked her tongue.  “I smell rats,” she said.  “And sewage.”

Arcos gasped, and looked at Toaster and Dezi, “And Mama!”  He took a deep breath down the manhole.  “She smells like soap and flowers!”

Both dogs nodded and beamed.

“Why’d she go down into the sewer?” Aries asked.

“I don’t know…” Arcos drawled.

“Perhaps someone was hurt in there,” Medusa asked.  “I bet there are mutants in the sewer.  It would be a safe place to be.  Especially if you were a water dweller.”

“That’s where she is,” Dezi said, “That’s where we need to go.”

“Wait a minute,” Arcos put his hand up.  “Neither of you are in any kind of shape to go traipsing around the sewers.  You’re wounds will get infected and then we’ll have to deal with an angry Phoenix after we find her.”

“We’re fine to go in,” Toaster said.  “We’ve done worse things than go in the sewers.”

“I can smell her now,” Arcos said, “I think.”

“Go to the haunted warehouse,” Medusa said.  “You can wait for us there, then you’ll know as soon as we’re done.”

Toaster and Dezi looked at each other, their faces grave.

“You’ll be a liability,” Arcos said.  “Neither of you is in any shape to fight anyone if we have to fight.”

The two dogs conceded.  “We’ll wait for you at your home,” Dezi said.  “Be safe.”

“We’re the Children of the Phoenix,” Arcos said.  “We’re always safe.”

Toaster rolled his eyes.

 


	35. Chapter 35

Phoenix glared at the little gray rat The Rat King had called Tacitus.  “Tacitus,” she scoffed.  “You would be named Tacitus.  You little…” she was going to say liar, but he wasn’t a liar.  He was dying when she found him, and The Rat King had said he was fond of her.

What’s the matter with me? she thought.  Why am I feeling sorry for this little thing.

Tacitus squeaked.

‘Why are you guarding me?” she asked him out loud.  “It isn’t like I can escape.”  She pulled on the ropes with which she was tied.  “I’m not going anywhere.”

He squeaked again, and came closer to her, his pink nose twitching.   His head cocked to the side, and then straight again, as he sat up on his haunches.  He reached out and put a tiny pink paw on her knee.

She jerked slightly at the touch, even though she could barely feel it through her jeans.  One of her hair sticks, already quite loose, fell out of her hair, causing for half of her long tresses to fall free.  It clattered on the floor.  She looked over at where it skidded, and jerked her head back to try and get her hair out of her face. 

Tacitus ran over it, grabbed it, and then brought it back to her, standing up at her knee again.  He held the stick up to her and squeaked.

She breathed what could have been a derisive laugh, “Thank you, Tacitus.  But I can’t do anything with it.”

The rat put it down next to her knee, and then jumped on her lap.

“You must be desperate for love if you’re looking for it from me,” she told him.

He squeaked.

“I don’t speak rat,” she said.  “It all sounds the same to me.”

Tacitus chattered.

“Nope,” she shook her head, “still sounds like rat.”

“He asked if you were hungry,” The Rat King’s voice sailed over to her from the entrance he used to the station. 

She started at the noise, she hadn’t heard him walking in, or the giant rat by his side either.  In a quick act of defiance, she turned back to Tacitus and said cordially, “Why, yes, I am Tacitus.  Thank you for asking.”

“Even the sewer rats have manners to those who treat them correctly,” said The Rat King, walking over to her with a box in his hands.  He bent down, so he was right next to her, and took a papaya out of the box.  It was bruised, and might have been partially rotten, but it still had about half of it that might have been good.  “You will have to excuse my poor manners as host,” he said, taking out a knife.  “I was not expecting guests quite so soon.”

He spoke almost as if she _was_ a guest, sitting on a cushion, serving someone he had longed and expected to arrive and had gotten the good pleasure of them arriving early.

He cut a slice off of the fruit and held it to her mouth.  “You like papaya, I hope,” he said.

He was going to feed her by hand?  She had hoped he’d untie her so she could eat.  Having her hands free would allow her to draw her knife, which might give her enough time to make a run for it and get out of the sewer.  No such luck.

“You need to eat,” he urged, his smooth voice deceptively calming.  “It will you do no good to starve yourself.”

The blighter was right.  She opened her mouth, and he gently placed the piece of fruit in her mouth.  She closed her mouth and began to chew.  As she did so, he stroked her head, like she was a pet, and put her hair behind her ear.

The white rat on his shoulder chittered.

“Yes, Aristotle,” The Rat King said, slicing off another piece of papaya.  “She is.”

She didn’t think she wanted to know what the white rat thought she was.

He fed her all of the still edible parts of the papaya, and after that, he fed her an apple.  It was a disgustingly intimate action, so that it brought her to nauseousness, but she ate anyway.  To be helpless, and have someone place food in her mouth, was something almost too private to participate in.  She could only imagine it happening between a parent and their child, or between lovers.    Yet, here she was, being fed and petted by a crazy, burned, rat-crazy man like she was a dog with its master.

When he was finished, he took the box to the table, and took out an apple for himself.

“When are you going to untie me?” she asked softly.  She was tired, and sore.

“All in good time, my dear,” he said.  “All in good time.  You will be free, truly free, when I perfect my serum.”  He gathered up several lab instruments, and the canister of his mutagen.  “But first,” he continued, “I must create more of my giant rats.”  He said the last with an affection in his voice that seemed greatly out of place in this nightmare of a scene.

“Why do you need more giant rats?” she asked.  Tacitus crawled up to where her legs and torso met, and curled up in a tight circle.

“I must have human specimens for my army,” he said casually.  “My giant rats will fetch them, and anything else I need, for me.”  He chuckled, “Tacitus is very fond of you.”

She looked down at the rat in her lap.  Why was this happening to her?  Why was this rat curling up with her?  Was he trying to lull her into some sort of complacence, so that she’d be easier to handle?  This entire situation was crazy! 

“What about your general?” she asked, trying to match his casual tone of voice.  “Where is he?”

“He will be here in good time also,” he replied.  “He is like you,” his voice had that affectionate tilt to it again, and it made her queasy.  “He does not yet realize where his true home, what his true destiny is.”

True destiny mon cul, she said to herself.  The poor guy is probably up there, having pizza with his wife and kids, not knowing this nutcase wants to turn him into a human-rat-warrior.   “What if he doesn’t want this to be his true destiny?” she asked.  “What if he wants to choose something else?”

“It is of little consequence,” he answered, not stopping what he was doing at the table.  “There is no other choice for him,” he held up a small syringe filled with a green liquid.  “Just as there will be no other choice for you.”

***

Arcos took a deep breath through his nose, trying to catch the scent of soap and flowers among the noxious scents that mingled together in the sewer. 

Medusa flicked her tongue out, “You smell anything?” she asked.

Arcos shook his head, “No,” he said.  “There is too much for me to sift through.”

“We’re going to have to start having smelling practice,” Medusa said.  “I smell rats, and roaches, and sewage, and a banana somewhere, but no Mama.”

“All I smell is merde,” Aries said.

“What is it with you and swearing in French?” Medusa hissed.

“It sounds cool.”

Medusa rolled her eyes.

“Stop arguing, guys,” Arcos said, looking from one end of the tunnel to the other.  “We need to figure out which way to go.”

“Since we don’t have any other clues,” Aries said, “other than she came down here, why don’t we go the way we went before?”    

Arcos shrugged, and headed down the tunnel.  “Sounds good to me.”

They walked, and twisted and turned, and smelled for hours. 

“Everything is smelling the same to me, now,” Arcos said.  “I can’t make out anything.”

“Maybe we should go back and get Toaster and Dezi,” Aries suggested.

“Wait,” Medusa hissed, stopping and flicking her tongue in and out.

“This isn’t working, Medusa,” Arcos said.  “It must be well past midnight by now.  We need to come up with another plan.”

“I smell rats…” her voice trailed off.

“So?” Aries asked.  “It’s the sewer.  There are rats all over the place.”

“…and I smell that Freddie Kreuger rat man.”

They were still and silent for a moment, Medusa’s tongue flickering quickly in and out.  She turned in the direction of the scent, and darted down the sewer tunnel. 

“It’s this way!”

***

Phoenix lay down on the concrete, looking at Tacitus, who was lying by her head on his side.  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been down there, her shoulders were now numb from the position the rope put her arms.  Rats came in at intervals, covering the vertical spaces like dust.  She was bored, so bored, in fact, that she was no longer scared.  She simply looked at Tacitus, after having looked at whatever else there was for her look at in this broken, dilapidated depot.  She was brought out of her stupor by The Rat King’s smooth voice.

“You belong here,” he said, “with your brothers.”

For a moment, she thought he was speaking to her, but when he finished the sentence, she saw he wasn’t.  Twisting back up so she could see, she saw him with his hands in front of him, he was facing the entry way, his back to her.

“I am your king,” His voice was convincing, hypnotic.  “Come to me!” 

Who was he talking to?  Perhaps some rat somewhere had enough willpower to resist him, and he was trying to bring him to the station.   Good for you, she cheered the rat on silently.  You stay where you are and tell him to kiss your rat ass. 

The Rat King turned toward her, obviously out of his trance and no longer speaking to whomever he had addressed.  “What?” he asked, turning back toward the entrance.  A wave of rats came through, all chittering.  “How?  Caligula! Claudius!  Nero!  Stop them!”

As he said it, a giant snake appeared in the entry, mouth open, fangs held in a striking position.

“Medusa!” Phoenix cried.  Tacitus ran circles around her, crying in a high pitched squeal.

The three giant rats came skidding to a halt. 

Medusa smiled in that disturbingly evil fashion she had, and said, “Ooo, lunch!”

From behind her, Arcos and Aries burst through the entry, their weapons already drawn.  The two giant rats on the flanks each went for one of Phoenix’s sons, leaving the middle rat to deal with Medusa.

She twisted and turned in a way that might have been considered seductive in a different setting, her dark eyes shining.  “Oh, you’re not afraid of little old me, are you?” she asked, looming upward so that she towered over the giant rat.

The rat looked like it was thinking about its predicament.

It didn’t think fast enough, however.  Medusa darted toward it, and with the thickest part of her powerful body, knocked it clear across the station.  It yelped, and fell down a hole in the floor to one of the lower levels.

Aries chopped at the giant rat that went for him, but it jumped out of his way.  These things are much more agile than they look, he noticed.  It snapped at him from one side, then from another, trying to find an opening just as Aries was.

Arcos’ rat had managed to get to him though the swing of his sledgehammer.  The bear and rat rolled on the ground, Arcos keeping the snapping teeth away from by holding the rat back with his legs.  They rolled into the set of tables, sending them and the lab equipment crashing to the floor.

Phoenix watched in horror as a wall of rats began erecting itself around her, Tacitus still running around her like a greyhound on a racetrack.  The wall of brown rats, gray rats, white rats, black rats, spotted rats, striped rats, and patterned rats grew around her, and began to come together above her head, so that she and Tacitus were totally enveloped by rodents.  It was only then that Tacitus stopped running, and crawled back into her lap.

“You little rat!” she yelled at him.

He squeaked at her, but did not move from her lap, despite her attempts to buck him off.

She saw the wall of rats collapse in front of her, and flash of the dark green of Medusa’s body.  But in heartbeat, the wall was resurrected.

The same scenario was enacted twice more, before Phoenix heard Medusa say, “What is up with this?”  Then, Medusa’s head popped through the wall, and squeals of rat voices filled the air.  Medusa rolled, using her body as a rolling pin, and managed to get the cage of rats to collapse.  Phoenix watched as rats converged on her daughter.  “I could use some help here!” Medusa yelled.

Aries showed up, and another crash resounded in the background.  He brought his ax to her ropes that held her to the pipe, and sliced them.  Tacitus leapt on the ram, and dug his teeth into him so deep that blood began to spread through the ram’s wool.  He shook his arm, trying to dislodge the rat, but the rat held on, flopping about like a dying fish.

Phoenix brought her arms to her front, and winced at the pins and needles that spread through her shoulders.  Her fingers burned with the return of blood flow, but she managed to get her legs untied.

“Get off me, you flea bitten rodent!” Aries grabbed Tacitus with his free hand, and managed to dislodge him.  He threw him across the station, and the rat fell to one of the lower floor.  He made to come toward Phoenix.

“Help Medusa!” his mother ordered.

He immediately changed course, and went to help rid Medusa’s body of the seemingly endless stream of rats that attacked her.  He managed to get enough of them off of her, that she darted to Phoenix, and picked her up a coil.

“Got her!” she cried, dashing toward the entry. 

Aries went to help Arcos.  The large rat lurched as the ram’s horns pummeled its ribcage, sending it over the precipice to the lower floors below.   Then they were out of the station, following Medusa to the surface.

They surfaced at the first grate they came to, which brought them up in a busy street.  Medusa didn’t slow down, she forced open the grate, and flashed to the side of a building and up it to the roof.  Aries gave out a vicious swear, so that Phoenix wanted to shout, “Language!” but she held her tongue.  He and Arcos were on the roof in only a few moments, and they bounded away toward the haunted warehouse.

Once home, Toaster and Dezi ran to meet them, gasps and exclamations of worry escaping their lips.  Hugs were exchanged all the way around, and Phoenix made a beeline to the kitchen.  She drank down as much water as her stomach would take before becoming queasy, and then sank down in a chair.  The motion made her legs cramp, so she immediately stood back up.

The five mutants were dressing each other’s wounds, following the routine that their mother followed so many times before when dressing a hurt.  She was glad she didn’t have to do it, despite having done literally nothing for over a day, she was exhausted. 

“You need to stop going in the sewers by yourself,” Arcos told her when he noticed her done drinking.

A flash of annoyance seared through her.  She’d been tied up, had blood stolen from her, and was in constant attendance by some weird rat and her child was admonishing her?  “I can go wherever I please by myself,” she said.  “I can go jump off a bridge by myself if I wish!”

Arcos blinked.  This was obviously not the reaction he had expected.  “You keep getting hurt when you into the sewers,” he said softly.

“I am not hurt,” she spat.  “You three are the ones who are hurt!  I don’t have a scratch on me!”

“Why are you angry?” Aries asked.  “We just saved you!”

“I told you never to go after me,” she snarled, realizing why she was becoming incensed.  “I told you, you were never to go after me, and you did anyway.”

“We didn’t know where you were!” Medusa cried.  “You expect us to leave you lost?”

“I expect you to obey me!” Phoenix thundered.

There was a silence that ensued in the warehouse.  The only sound that Phoenix could hear was her own labored breathing.

“I expect you to obey me,” she said again, without the force of her previous outburst.  She turned toward the garden window, and began to climb out of it.

“Mama,” Arcos said.

She cut him off.  “I’ll be in the garden,” her voice cracked, and she descended the rope.  She plopped herself in the middle of the lot, surrounded by green growing things that smelled fresh and sweet, so unlike the sewers she’d just emerged from.  She looked at the juniper bush, and took deep breaths to calm herself down.

She began to count her breath in an effort to clear her mind, but she could hear Toaster, Dezi, and her children talking in the room above.

“I’ve never heard her yell before,” Dezi was saying.  “It was like the air was pushing us backward.”

“Imagine living with that,” Aries grumbled.

Toaster chuckled.  “No, thank you.”

“She didn’t use her magic on you,” Dezi said, surprised.

“She will when she calms down,” Medusa assured her. 

Phoenix heard a now familiar skittering coming for a section of the garden.  She turned toward the catnip patch and saw a rat reaching into the dirt.  She felt another flash of anger, and grabbed the first thing she saw, a potshard from a broken planter.  “Get out of my garden!” she snarled and threw it at the rat.  True to form, she hit it square in the ribs.  It squealed, and the shard stuck in it like a thrown knife.  It ran off, crying a strange cry.

“”Why did you lead me down there?” she asked the unbidden thought, her own voice very soft.

 _Didn’t,_ came the reply so quickly, it startled her.

Phoenix sank down in front of the juniper bush, drawing her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.  She dropped her head to her knees and closed her eyes, so she was enveloped in dark and the sweet smell of her garden.


	36. Chapter 36

Medusa bolted upright from her perch on the back of the couch, “Mama!”  she called to the kitchen.  “We’re on the news!”

Her mother came running to the TV, to see a fuzzy video of Medusa slithering up a building, holding her mother in her coils.  Then Aries and Arcos came out of the grate on the street, jumped up on the roof of a building using the wall of the adjacent building for leverage, and bounded off out of the camera’s view.

“We’re famous!” Aries cried. 

“Let’s hope not,” Phoenix said, going back to her task in the kitchen.

 

***

 

The Phoenix had nightmares for several nights, little Tacituses running all around her, forming walls in front of her, falling down upon her and drowning her in a sea of rats.  She would follow a little Tacitus through a maze, sometimes a sewer, sometimes a hedgerow, sometimes an unfamiliar warehouse.  He would weave her left and right, and then come to a lab, where he would turn around and grow into a huge, skeletal-faced horse of a rodent, open his mouth and try to devour her.  She would wake up in the early morning, not feeling refreshed at all, and hope fervently that Arcos and Aries had destroyed the Rat King’s lab enough that he could not continue with his insane plans.

She began going out a little earlier for her clinics, and staying out later, in an attempt to wear herself out.  An exhausted sleep held no dreams.  She had always been a vivid dreamer, and the stretches of nightmares were frustrating to wait through until they changed back to something more pleasant.

One day while out at clinic, at about one in the morning, Arcos showed up, a huge, proud smile on his face.  She opened her mouth to admonish him, fire in her eyes.  He held up his paws, smile still on his face, “Wait!” he cried.  “I wasn’t checking up on you!  I was following you!”

“Following me—“ she managed to get out, before he interrupted her again.

“I’m practicing my smelling!”

The remark took his mother off guard, and the fire drained from eyes.  “What?”

“I’m practicing my smelling,” he said more calmly.  “I’m follow your scent for practice.  I’m getting better.”

She smiled and shook her head.  “You’re following my scent through the city?”

“Yeah!” he sounded like a young boy having discovered a new talent.

“Where are your brother and sister?”

“They’re cruising,” he told her. 

She sighed.  “Bears have the best sense of smell of any land animal, you know,” she told him as she packed up her items.  “If I knew you were following me, then I would have taken a harder route.”

After that night, she did.

Being alone with only one of her children was a great rarity, and she began to look forward to the hour between one and two in the morning when her son would come and find her, and they would walk home together, just to the two of them.  Sometimes they would walk in silence, and sometimes Arcos would tell her about his thoughts, thoughts she knew he didn’t share with anyone else.  It made her feel wanted, like a mother again.

One of those nights, he surprised her by asking, “Mama, are you happy?”

“Of course I’m happy, Teddy Bear,” she said.  “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

He was quiet for a long moment, his face thoughtful.  “You don’t…you’re the only human any of us know who lives with mutants.”

“I’m the only human you know.”

“I mean…you are the only human who is living with a bunch of mutants.  No other mutants have humans living with them.”

“So?” she asked gently.

“Don’t you miss other humans?” he asked.

“Mutants and humans aren’t all that different, Teddy Bear,” she said.  “They’re both people, and people are people.”  She shrugged.

“But a lot of people don’t live like we do.”

“Some do,” she replied.  “And I am one of them.”

“Why?”

She looked at her son, a huge thing, covered with dark brown fur, streaks of almost-gold on his paws and around his ears and eyes.    Of all of her children, he was the most thoughtful, the one most likely to mull something over and let it bother him or make him happy.  He felt his emotions gently, not like her with all-encompassing boldness.  “Because I want to,” she answered simply.

“You could have had a good life, Mama,” he looked ahead of him, fear on his face.  “You’re beautiful—“

She laughed, cutting him off.  “I’m pretty, Arcos.  You think I am beautiful because I’m your mother, and all boys think their mother is beautiful.”

“No,” his voice was steady, and his eyes still ahead of him.  “Just because I’m not human doesn’t mean I don’t know about humans.  You’re beautiful.  And you’re talented.  And you’re smart.  And you’re kind.”  He took a deep breath.  “You could have done anything you wanted. “

“This is what I wanted,” she said.

He looked at her then, frustrated.  She was obviously evading the questions, “We Googled you,” he said hotly.  “You were rich—“

“No,” she corrected quickly.  “My father was rich.  Stephane and I were never rich.  We were comfortable.”

“—you were a great gymnast—“

Again she interrupted him.  “I was a good gymnast.”

“You were an Olympic hopeful!”

“Lots and lots and lots of people are Olympic hopefuls,” she explained.  “That doesn’t mean very much.”

“You were on the fast track to making a career as a poet.  You had a husband and a family.  You could have lived a good life.  Why do you live this one?”

Putting the question in the present tense made her wince.  “Teddy Bear,” she said.  “Phoebe Trice was not very nice.  She cared about winning, that’s it.”

“You did charity benefits,” he said, and then he smiled.  “We found this old video of you and your high school gym team and basketball team doing a breakdancing benefit for charity.  We didn’t know you could breakdance,” his eyes twinkled.  “You never dance like that when you dance with us.”

“Any athlete worth their salt does charity benefits.  It isn’t because they care.”  It was her turn to look away, her face ashamed.  “They do it to make themselves look good.”  Arcos opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hand to stop him.  “Oh, they might care in some abstract sense, but not in a real way.  It is to push their career forward.  Phoebe Trice was not nice and Phoebe Laferrier wasn’t much better.  She cared about her career, and how beautiful her husband and children were, and how well her children could do in their lives.  She did the exact same thing as her parents did.  Neither of those people were someone to be proud of.  Not where it matters.”

“Phoebe Trice gave up a fortune and her family to marry the man she loved,” Arcos said.  “And Phoebe Laferrier gave up her family and her life to carry out five monsters from a lab and raise them and love them for the past twenty years.”

Her throat constricted, so she wasn’t sure if she could answer him.

“Why did you choose to do that, instead of going back to your old life?”

It took her a few long moments to find her voice.  “Arcos,” she stopped walking, and looked at him seriously, tears coming to her eyes.  “That woman is dead.  She had a memorial service, and knowing the Haitian community, she probably has a grave stone.”

“You do,” he told her.  “It’s in Haiti.  It’s pretty.”

The tears escaped her eyes, and she sucked her lips in an attempt to find her voice again. “That woman is dead,” she said again.  “The world is no worse off with her gone.”  Again he was about to say something and she held up her hand.  “Her husband has been happy all these years.  Her children have had more family members than they can count, and they have been happy.  All without Phoebe Laferrier.”  She paused.  “All those traits you said I have, those belong to me.”  She had to take a breath to continue.  “Not to Phoebe Marie Trice Laferrier.”

Arcos’ eyes spilled tears, they dripped down his eyes and the back of his muzzle, being absorbed in his fur at his lower jaw.  He scooped his mother up as if she were a doll, and buried his head, as much of it as he could, in her shoulder.

“Arcos,” her voice was horse.  “Do not ever think that I regret a day of this life I’ve lived.  My life is full.  It is full of love, and laughter, and family, and adventure!”  He put her down, both of them blinking rapidly.  “Why would I give up a life like that?”

 

***

She started out to clinic one summer afternoon, wearing a mint colored tank top and a pair of shorts with socks and running shoes, going her round-about way through the city to give Arcos a run for his money, when she came to a small patch of motels.  Thanking her luck, she spend the rest of the afternoon going through the dumpsters as quietly as she could, collecting little once used soaps and shampoos and towels and wash cloths that were now too thin or stained for customers.  Stuffing her messenger bags to the brim, she started off again, waiting for the voice that was and was not her voice to tell her where to go.

She walked a while, the sun sinking below the horizon.  With the sky still light, even though the sun was no longer in the sky, she heard, quite distinctly, _Here._

Looking around for a place to settle, she saw a rat rummaging through a pile of restaurant food left next to a dumpster.  She felt disgust well in her stomach, and reached for her slingshot.  Then the rat turned and looked at her.  It was bleary eyed, the edge of its eyelids were red and gunky.  Its fur was mangy, stuck together in places, with what she didn’t know.  It was breathing through its mouth, labored.  She felt the disgust fade from her stomach, replaced by a feeling of pity.

The unbidden thought had brought her here, and she would trust the unbidden thought.

She inched closer to the rat, holding out her hand.  It backed away, so she froze.  They stayed in that position for quite a while, each held in place by anticipation.  Finally, the rat inched forward, perhaps hoping that she had some sort of goodie that was better than what it had.  It sniffed her fingertips, and she grabbed it in a flash too fast for the rat escape.

It made a move with its mouth as if to squeak, but nothing came out. 

“It’s OK,” she tried to sooth the creature.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  I promise.”

The rat struggled, but it didn’t seem to have much in it to do so, and soon stopped, lying in her hands breathing harshly.

She looked around for a cup and a spigot, and quickly found both.  Keeping the rat in the crook of her arm with her hand keeping it from escaping, she filled the cup up, and brought it over to her messenger bags.  She took out a towel and a soap and squatted down.  Taking the cup of water, she wet the rat, and washed him with the soap, lathering the little thing up and speaking it softly as she did so.  “We will get you all fixed up,” she said.  “You’ll be right as rain, don’t worry.  You’ll feel much better once you’re all clean.”

She rinsed it, and then rinsed it again with a bottle of antiseptic rinse she carried, emptying one of her four 16 oz bottles on the rodent.  Then she rubbed it down with the towel, wishing she had a clean one.  It then was lotioned, potioned, and tingled accordingly, before she placed it by the side of the building, leaving the towel with it.

“You always go around helping street rats?” a gravelly voice came from the shadows behind her.

She jumped, and grabbed her chest.  “Slash!” she smiled at the giant turtle standing in the semi-darkness.  “You gave me a heart attack.”

He was smiling back at her, “You need to listen better.”

She shook her head, and put her hand on her hip.  “What laser wound do you have now that you help with?”

He held up both of his hands, and turned them over, as if she was inspecting them for cleanliness before a meal.  “Nothing to help today,” he said.  “I heard you talking to the rat, and came over.”

She shook her head again, and walked over to her bags.  “It isn’t often I get a visit from someone who doesn’t need patching.  This is a good portent for the night!”  She opened one of the bags, “Come, stay and keep me company for a while.”

The large turtle didn’t argue with her as she was expecting him to, but made himself comfortable.  Rummaging through her bag she found a plastic jar filled with feverfew alcohol tincture, her mainstay for an anti-inflammatory and pain killer.  She got out a dropper bottle of wormwood tincture, it was on top because she used it on the rat.  She gave the jar to Slash, and unscrewed the lid to the little vial.

“Let’s drink to your good luck!  Now, this is doesn’t taste good, but it gets the job done.”  She held up her little vial.

Slash let out a deep, rough laugh, and unscrewed the mayonnaise jar his tincture and clinked it to her little bottle.  “To good luck!”  He then put it to his mouth and took a long, deep swig.

Phoenix downed her in one gulp, with it being only about the amount of a shot glass.  She made a face, and looked at the bottle as if it were poison.  “That’s absolutely atrocious!” she exclaimed.  “No wonder my patients don’t want to drink it!”

Slash made a similar face when he took the jar from his beak.  “You’re right, this stuff is nasty.”  He took another swig.

She laughed, and said, “So, Slash, tell me about yourself.”

The turtle just looked at her and then took another swig of the feverfew tincture.

“Alright then,” she tried, “how about you ask me a question, and then I will ask you a question.”

He regarded her with his little, beady eyes.  “OK,” he replied.  “Why do you go around the city helping mutants?”

Without missing a beat she said, “Because I want to.”  She quickly asked her question before he could protest her answer.  “Were you a turtle or a human before your mutation?”

“A turtle,” he said slowly.

She waited for his next question.

“Why do you want to help mutants?”

She twisted her lips in thought.  “Because they are people too, and they deserve to have someone care for them when they are hurt.”

“I’ve met a few that weren’t people.”

“I haven’t,” she replied.  “Where did you live before you were a mutant?”

“The sewer.”

Why does everyone seem to come from the sewer nowadays? she wondered.  What happened to warehouses?

“Where do you live?”  Slash asked.  “On the street?”

“No,” she smiled.  “I live with my family in a haunted warehouse.”

“A haunted warehouse?”  His eyes went wide.  “You mean, with ghosts.”

She laughed outright.  “Yes,” she replied.  “Four of them!”  Seeing the look on his face, she went on, “It is very convenient.  It keeps the humans away.”

“You don’t live with humans?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, “and you have asked several questions in a row.”  She folded her arms across her chest, and he took another drink, finishing off the jar.  “Where do you live now?”

“Wherever,” he said.  “Nowhere in particular.”

“Do you have anyone to live with?”

He was quiet, as if considering his answer.  “My partner abandoned me,” he drawled. 

“Oh, Slash,” she said in her maternal voice.  “That must have hurt.”

He shrugged.  “He was holding me back.  I had learned everything I could from him.”

“He taught you?”

There was another pause.  “Everything I knew…”

“How are you surviving now?” she asked gently.

“On my wits,” he replied, the self-pity in his voice disappearing.  “I take care of the Kraang.  Something my partner couldn’t do.”

“We need people to take care of the Kraang,” Phoenix said.  “There aren’t enough…” her voice trailed off as a small pink triangle appeared at the opposite end of the ally.  It grew in size, until it took up almost the entire section of the alley.  Phoenix put her bags back on in a rush, and took out her slingshot.  She knew that sickening-pink color.  Apparently, so did Slash, he took out his club with the spikey ball at the end, and held it up.  “Speak of the devil and who should appear,” she muttered.

“You’re pretty good if you can summon up Kraang,” he said.

“That’s not even funny,” she replied, backing up from the pink triangle, and cocking her slingshot.

For a few long moments nothing happened, the pink triangle just taunted them at the end of the alley.  Then, appearing out of nowhere, came a row of six Kraang robots, followed by another six.

Slash ran toward them, his weapon swung behind him, to come down on a robot, obliterating it.  The rest of the eleven robots converged on him like ants to honey.

Phoenix began shooting at whatever she could, but she was afraid she’d hit Slash if she was too careless.  She managed to hit one of the Kraang inside of the robot, and the robot fell to the side, pink gunk oozing on the ground underneath it.  Her bullets pinged off several before hitting another in the eye, causing the head to turn backward.

Slash seemed to be holding his own for a few minutes, before the number of Kraang overwhelmed them. 

“Fight them, Slash!” Phoenix encouraged, her bullets whizzing by and pinging off of robots.

Slash swung his club with the spikey ball again, and took out another robot, sending it flying against the building, where the robot fell apart.  She noticed that the robots were almost completely ignoring her.  Their movements were more coordinated than she’d seen before, they were attempting to drive Slash toward the triangle!

A great growl echoed behind them. Turning around, Arcos came bounding toward her.

“Arcos!” she cried, pointing to Slash.  “Help him!”

“It is another one known as a mutant,” said one of the robots.  “Kraang must apprehend this mutant and take it to where it is not yet.”

“Yes, Kraang,” answered another.  “Kraang must.”

Arcos arrived at the second speaking Kraang robot, and whollopped it with his sledgehammer.  It went flying with a great squishing sound.

Slash took out another robot, leaving five.  Two of them jumped at him, and began to drag him bodily toward the triangle.

Arcos waved his hammer, not hitting anything, and ran toward the turtle.  “Hold on!” he cried, wincing as a bullet flew by his head and caused a loud ping from one of the robots that held Slash.  The bear was about to get to him, when they disappeared into the triangle, and it immediately closed, blanketing the alley in darkness.

He heard a squishing sound behind him, one of his mother’s bullets having it another robot.  It left two more of them, and it took him little time to finish them off.

“What was that pink triangle?” he asked, walking up to Phoenix. 

“I don’t know,” she confessed.  “A portal of some sort, I would guess.”

“Maybe it leads to the TCRI building,” Arcos suggested.

“Or one of their labs.”  She sighed, “He said that the Kraang were after him the last time I met him,” she gestured toward where the triangle had been.  “And then they said that about apprehending you.”

“They’re collecting mutants,” he said.  “That’s not good.”

“No,” she agreed.  “It isn’t.”

“Looks like we’re going Kraang hunting again, huh?”

“Yes,” she agreed again.  “It does.


	37. Chapter 37

Since her encounter with the Rat King, Phoenix had not had any dealings with any of the Grey Cats.  She couldn’t really say that she missed it, but she missed the company, the doing something to help someone, and, if she was completely honest, the feeling of begrudging and almost superstitious respect she received.

She could definitely see how easy it was for power to go to one’s head.

So she was quite surprised when members began visiting her home again for their injuries.  They still had no one who could deal with anything more than a cut, and if something got infected, they were at a complete loss.  If the mutant was an insect, he or she was just out of luck. 

Most of the mutants who came to her were reptiles or insects, something whose body worked differently enough from a human that they couldn’t figure out how to heal themselves.  A few birds came to her, too, but they were a rare sort of mutant anyway.

Each person who came in always asked how she was doing, if she needed anything, and that Chategris had always respected her medical expertise.  Had she not been his Medicienne long before she was the Phoenix?  He had regaled the story of how he’d come to the Haunted Warehouse, with the human woman who took care of four little mutants, and who healed the homeless and the lost.  How she had done what no other person he knew or had known could do.  She healed hurts on all kinds of mutants, and asked nothing in return.  How she had healed Toaster with her tears alone.  Apparently it was now known to all of what was left of the Grey Cats.  

The Phoenix knew what all of this was—Chategris’ attempt to apologize without having to say he was sorry.  She wasn’t ready to forgive him yet. 

A witchdoctor! Her heart rate would increase at the thought of it.  How insulting!  To think in your mind I’m a witchdoctor is bad enough, to say it to my face is…

…was something he needed to suffer for a little longer before he was forgiven.

“Chategris knows he is always welcome here,” she would tell her patients when they spoke to her of him. 

Let him brave the ghosts of my warehouse.  Then, maybe, I will forgive him, she thought.

 

***

 

Phoenix had her head down on her arm, engaging in her favorite activities, writing.  Her pencil flew across the paper, her eyes barely seeing what she was writing due to the angle of her on her arm on the table.  It came to her faster than she could write it, and she was lost in the words and movement of her pencil.  She wrote about the deep voice she was looking for that seemed to sing with the drip of the sewers and how she liked the sound of it.  She wrote about Arcos, and smelling, and playing.

She was brought back to reality by a “zzzzzttt!”

She sat up and looked around at what might be the cause the sound.  She didn’t see anything.

All three of the kids were in the workshop on the floor below.  She could hear their muffled talking, and sounds of bangs and mechanical tools whirring.  None of those sounds matched the one she just heard.

She heard it again, and saw a flicker of light from the side of her eye, coming from the bookcase.  The ball that Razz had found, that was now resting on the bowl at the end of the shelf, began to glow.  Above it a picture appeared.

It was a picture of a warehouse.  She recognized it, it was near the docks, one of the warehouses used for the immediate unloading of the ships until their big rigs arrived.  The picture slowly descended into the actual warehouse, zooming in until it was in one room, where a sickening-pink light began to blink.  It stayed in this position for a moment or two, and then the ball went dead.

She sat staring at the spot where the graphic had shown, like a hologram right in her living room.  For some reason, it didn’t seem possible, but her mind chided her.  Anything in your life is possible, girlfriend.

“Kids!” she called down the stairs.  “We’re going Kraang hunting tonight!”

***

Kraang hunting was usually a more involved endeavor than it was this night.  Usually they had to search for their destination, wait for a good time to go in, and attack immediately.

Tonight the four of them waited in the rafters of the warehouse that Phoenix had seen projecting from the Kraang ball.   The warehouse itself was completely empty, devoid of anything other than them and the varmints that may have called the corners and dark spaces home.

“I don’t like waiting,” Aries whispered.

“No one likes waiting,” Phoenix answered. 

Aries opened his mouth to say something else, when a tiny pink triangle appeared in the middle of the air below them.  It grew, until it was door sized.  For a moment, nothing happened, and then Kraangdroids began to march out of it, four by four.  Looking at it from above, it was very disconcerting to see one side of the triangle shining its sickening-pink light onto the empty wall of the warehouse, and then see the other side of the warehouse begin to fill with Kraang.

After a good deal of Kraang robots came through the triangle, another Kraang came through, only this one rode a different robot.  It reminded Phoenix of the spaceship-riding Kraang, only this spaceship had legs, and was walking like a great, giant spider.  Two more followed it, pulling something behind them.  The metallic ropes were taut, and the robot who had entered before them turned and began directing traffic in a strange, twittery language.  Something large began to emerge from the triangle, metal and round, with what looked like a gun poking out.

“That doesn’t look good,” Arcos muttered.

“We need to close that door,” Phoenix said.  “Or at least keep anything else from coming through it.”

“How do we do that?” Medusa whispered.

“I haven’t any idea,” Phoenix replied.

“Guess we just do it the old fashioned way, then,” Aries said, bringing his ax behind him and jumping down from the rafters.  Medusa and Arcos followed him in the thick of things, and Phoenix pulled out her slingshot as cover support.

Six of the robots were incapacitated in moments, before laser fire even began firing.  Phoenix pelted brains with her slingshot.  While she hit a robot almost every time, she had trouble getting the brains in the middle.  Most had their backs to her, so she decided to concentrate on the spaceship-with-legs.

Arcos, Aries, and Medusa were having no problems at all with the Kraang robots that they were fighting.  Body parts when flying, pink goo that had once belonged inside of Kraang splattered about the warehouse.  They seemed unable to decide what to do in a coordinated attack.  They simply fought whichever mutant was closest to them.

While they were not much larger than their floating counterparts, the legged-spaceship Kraang seemed to have more…hands, for lack of a better word.  She shot at them, and they stopped pulling in the strange weapon that was only partially through the portal.  Then all three of them turned toward her, and their legs extended so they were eyelevel with her in the rafters.

“Oh dear,” she mumbled.

One of them shot at her, and she jumped out the way just as the metal beam she sat on ended up with a hole where she had been sitting.

  “It is the ones known as The Children of the Phoenix,” said a robotic voice.  “The Children of the Phoenix must be eliminated.”

Aries cried, “They know our name!  Now we’re never going to be able to change it!”

“Just get used to the name, Aries!” Phoenix screamed, jumping away from another laser fire.  She jumped like a frog, from beam to beam as the three legged-spaceship riding Kraang shot at her. 

An ominous creek echoed through the warehouse.

“We need to get out of here,” Arcos yelled.  “The building has lost too much support.”

Phoenix jumped, using a fallen beam as a slide from the ceiling to the floor, and then sprinted for the door after her children.

Shortly afterward, there was a crash, followed by an explosion.  Then, the Children of the Phoenix were enfolded in dust, unable to see anything.  The sound of sirens whined in the distance.  The dust lingered long enough for them to leave the area, once it had lightened and they could see their feet.

“What was that big thing they were bringing through that portal?” Medsua asked.

Arcos, Aries, and Phoenix shook their heads.  “I don’t know,” they all said at the same time.

“It didn’t look like anything good,” Aries said.

“It looked like it had a gun on it,” Arcos commented.

Phoneix nodded.  “Kurtzman said they were recovering from the explosion at the TCRI building,” she said.  “It looks like the recovery is complete to me.”


	38. Chapter 38

With the crime fighting car gone, they now did their crime fighting the old fashioned way: on foot.  The fancy car was much too flashy, Phoenix had decided.

In fact, Medusa and Aries told her of an incident one night, when she and Arcos were walking home, that they found hilarious.

“You will never believe what happened to us tonight!” Medusa had met them at the door of the warehouse, both she and Aries with huge smiles on their faces.

“We were driving and this Mustang pulled up next to us and wanted to race!” Aries had exclaimed.

“The guys in the car asked us where we got our costumes, because they were so realistic.”  Medusa drawled out so, her eyes wide.

“We told them we got them at The Haunted Warehouse,” Aries had continued.  “But they’re only open on Halloween!”

Both he and Medusa had burst out laughing.  It must have been much funnier in person, because Arcos nor Phoenix joined in.  In fact, Phoenix had been highly annoyed.  “I don’t want humans to see you,” she had said tightly.

“Lighten up, Mama,” Aries had waved one of his large hands at her.  “They thought we were wearing costumes.”

So this late summer night, covered in dust from the exploding warehouse, the Children of the Phoenix were jumping from roof to roof back home.  The wind caused by the jumps cooled off both their bodies and blew little clouds of dust behind them as they went. 

“Oh,” Arcos stopped, “come down to the street, I want to show you something.”  The bear jumped down to the ground, and waved for the rest of his family to join him.

“Did you even look before you jumped down?” Phoenix admonished. 

“Yes, there isn’t anybody here,” Arcos pointed to the wall.  “Look.”

They turned toward the wall, and all three of them gasped.  On the wall, was a beautiful graffiti mural.  On a black background was an elegantly done painting of four animals.  In the foreground was a giant boa constrictor.  It was gorgeously colored in vivid greens, with black, shining eyes.  To the left was a bear, standing on all fours, a dark brown with golden ear tips.  To the right was a ram rearing up, his horns curling about his head, this white body shaded in soft gray.  And behind them all, and a little above them, rose a great firebird, wings outspread, head pointing to the heavens, beak open in a silent cry.  The light from the firebird was rendered over the three animals in front of it, splattering reds, yellows, and oranges over them.

“Arcos!” Phoenix gasped.  “Did you do this?”

“Yep!” he drew himself up to his full height and smiled proudly. 

“It’s wonderful!” said Medusa. 

“Why’d you make me so small?” Aries asked, cocking his head to the side and looking at the picture.

“Because it isn’t you, it’s a ram,” Arcos explained.  “That’s how big rams are compared to boa constrictors and bears.”

“You’re not supposed to do graffiti,” Phoenix felt she had to say, “but, Arcos.  This is absolutely gorgeous!”  She turned to him, her face grave, “No one saw you, did they?”

Still smiling, Arcos shook his head.  “Nope!”

“We need to not let the humans see us,” she said quietly.  “Especially after that video that person took with their phone.”

As if summoning her warning from the aether, they heard several voices coming from the perpendicular street.  The four of them retreated to the shadows near a dumpster at the end of the building that Arcos had defaced.

“Hey baby,” they heard a male voice drawl.  “Don’t you want to talk?”

The only reply where several giggles, obvious by the voice also male.

“Come on, baby,” said a different voice.  “We just want talk to you.”

“You’re being complimented for being beautiful,” said a third voice.

“Be more grateful, bitch,” said a fourth male, in a very different tone from the other three.

The sound of tennis shoes hitting the concrete came closer and closer.  A girl, she couldn’t have been any more than 12 or 13, her body was still stretched in the beginning of womanhood that hadn’t yet filled out, came running into the alley.  She stopped half way down, realizing she’d ran into a dead end.  She turned quickly, her eyes so wide that the Children of the Phoenix could see the whites.

Five young men, they might have just been boys, having just become men, or very close to being so, followed the girl into the alley.   “You know,” said one of the men, “you should’ve talked to us.”  His voice was smug, as if he knew a secret she didn’t know.

They advanced on the girl, and she stood there, like a deer frozen in the headlights.    Two of the men grabbed her, and began pulling at her arms like a tug of war.  The girl let out a small cry.

“Mama,” Arcos said quietly.  Phoenix stood, as if frozen herself, watching the scene as it unfolded.   Every similar type of experience that had happened to her, flashed through her mind.  Being a woman, alone, in a Western city was a naturally unsafe experience.  There is no woman, she knew, who had not experienced something similar to this scene. Maybe not at such a brutal level, but some sort of violation that occurred simply because one was female.  The Phoenix was no exception.

Arcos’ verbal nudge bought her mind back into her body, and she stepped out of the shadows quietly, taking her long, golden hair out of her hair sticks, until enough light hit her for the group to see her clearly.  “You should try to do that to someone who will fight back,” she said, her voice very gentle.

The men stopped, and stared at her as if she were crazy. 

 “Look at you!” said the one who had told the girl she should have ‘talked’ to them.  “Where did you come from, Mama?”

The use of the word Mama, a sacred word that only her three little ones used, set her mouth into a line.  “I came from the shadows,” she said simply.  “You should run now while you still have the chance.”

“What?” said one of the other men.  “What are you going to do?  Scream for us?”

“No,” she shook her head, her hair shaking slightly as she did so.  “I am not going to utter a word.  You might scream, some though.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because you are going to be very, very afraid.”  Her voice was calm, and seemed to come from somewhere else besides herself.

“We should be afraid of you?”

“Yes,” she took another step forward.  “You should be very afraid of me.  You see,” she motioned behind her.  “I’m with them.”

Behind her, out of the shadows, came her three children to stand behind her.  The faces of the five men, along with the girl, whom they immediately go, transformed from smugness to horror.

In an instant, Medusa was behind them, blocking their escape.  Her tail whipped out and tripped one of the men up, he fell to the floor with a grunt.  She moved toward him slowly, her body undulating in a way that could have been called seductive if she was in another setting.  “You want to talk me, lover boy?” she hissed.  “I have a lot to say.”

The man screamed, and tried to scramble away on all fours, but Medusa caught him up her coils.  She lifted him up to her mouth, which she had opened wide.  She then sunk her long, sharp, fangs into his lower torso, near his femoral artery.  His scream was slowly choked out as she squeezed.

Arcos ran toward one of the men, drawing his sledgehammer as he did so.  With a great underhanded swing, he hit one of the retreating thugs in the crotch, and sent him flying.  He rammed against the wall of the building opposite of his beautiful painting, face first, and fell to the ground.  He immediately turned around, and connected with another man in the chest.  He went skidding across the concrete.  Arcos leapt up and landed at the man’s head as he came to a stop. Raising his sledgehammer again, he crushed the man’s pelvis with a mighty strike.

Aries did not draw his ax, but instead put his head down and rammed into one of the retreating men from the side, cramming into the dumpster at the end of the alley.   The man let out a low cry, almost drowned out by the clang of the dumpster.  Aries picked him up, held him above the ground, and shook him slightly.  “You can’t get any that you gotta do this?”  He brought the man close to his face, his eyes, with his hourglass shaped pupils close.  “Even I can get some without having to do this.”  He then threw the man in the air, and he came down on Aries horns.  The ram shook his head, and the man let out a scream as the sharp tips of his assailant’s horns tore deep into his flesh.  When he finally fell off, Aries then stamped down on his chest with one of his large, hoof-like feet, sending a gross crunch echoing through the air.

Phoenix walked up slowly to the last of the men, her children all engaged in the others, leaving this one a quivering mass against the wall where Arcos had painted his mural.  “Are you afraid of me now?” she asked, taking out her slingshot. 

“Please,” he man begged.  “Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”  He held up his hands.  “Please.”

“Oh, you will do what I want,” she assured him, her body almost pressed against his as she looked up into his face.    She then backed up from him, with the same agonizing slowness.

Relief spread across the man’s face at her retreat.  “Thank you,” he breathed, “thank you.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied.  In a blur, she had taken two bullets out of her pouch, pulled her slingshot back, and sent the bullet casings flying.  They hit the man in the crotch with a soft “ttthhhpp.”  He let out a scream, and sank to the ground, his hands clutching in between his legs.  She then took another two out, and aimed them at his head.  They hit with a deadly accuracy and force.  The man fell to the ground, blood pooling where lay.

Phoenix immediately put her slingshot back in her belt, and turned toward the girl, who was pressed against the wall, as if trying to hide inside the mural painted on it.  She came down beside her and asked gently, “Are you hurt?”

The girl shook her head, staring wildly at her, and then each of her children as they came up behind her.

“These men will not bother you, nor anyone else, every again,” Phoenix assured her.  “Are you sure you aren’t hurt?”

“I—I—I’m not,” she managed to get out.  “Are you…are you angels of the LORD?”

Phoenix laughed at the absurdity of the questions, but stopped when she saw the hurt on the girl’s face.  “No, far from it,” she said with a smile.  She stood up, and helped the girl to her feet.  “Go home,” she ordered mildly.  “And be good.”

“I—I—I will,” the girl said.  Then she turned and ran off.

 

***

 

The Phoenix didn’t like being angry.  It made her feel sticky, like sweat that was always in the process of drying.  No, she thought, being angry was a flash, it was there, like a dragon flying overhead.  But once the dragon had passed, the anger was gone, used up, and she was back to normal again.  This thing which she was feeling, it wasn’t anger.  It was a grudge.

And it was hard to hold when Chategris kept sending people over to her, singing her praises.

When he finally met the conditions she had set for herself for his path to forgiveness, it was impossible for her do so.   

“Ma Cherie,” he said as he climbed through the garden window.  “There you are!”  He even said it in English.

“I have always been here,” she said dryly.

“Ahhh,” he said, switching to French.  “Don’t be angry.   I have come to bring ma Medicienne bein-amiee a gift.”

“If I was your beloved doctor,” she said still speaking in English, “you wouldn’t have treated me so.”

Crevan crawled through the window after Chategris, smiling sheepishly as he entered.  Klashtooth followed the silver fox, the rabbit was not smiling.

“At least be honest,” Phoenix said in French.  “You love what I can give, not me.”

“That isn’t true!” he said, coming toward her, and digging in his back jeans pocket.  He wore no vest in the summer heat, his chest was bare, with nothing but his gray fur covering it.  He took out a small box, and held it out to her when he reached her.  “Pour tu,” he said.

“I don’t want it,” she said flatly.

“I brought it for you,” he said in a purr.

“You brought it so that I wouldn’t be mad at you anymore,” she told him.  “I am tired of playing games, Chategris.  What do you want?”

He said, “Come dance with us tonight.”

“Come dance with you tonight?” she scoffed. 

“I miss ma Medicienne,” he said.  “We miss The Children of the Phoenix.  You are our friends…”

“Are you serious?  After what you called me?”

He shook his head, the look on his face truly did look regretful.  “I was angry,” he said.  “What I said was disrespectful—“

“Disrespectful?” she cut him off.  “It wasn’t just disrespectful.  It was insulting.  You called me a witch!”  She made her tiny hands into fists by her side.  “And not a good witch!!”

“You are a good witch,” Chategris said.  When saw the Phoenix’s eyes go wide and her lips begin to curl, he put his hands up in front of him.  “You have helped so many of my people, with good magic…”

“It isn’t magic!” she almost screamed.  “If one of your imbecilic people would pay attention long enough to listen to me, I could teach them how to do what I do!  It isn’t magic!”

“It is a true gift,” he said quickly, his voice sounded disturbed.  “A gift that I have been fortunate to receive.   Not as fortunate as your friendship,” he said, the purr completely out of his voice.  “I value your friendship.”  He held out the box to her again, “I have come with a gift, and with an invitation to my friend.”

She crossed her arms and glared at him.

“Please,” he said, again offering her the box.

She sighed and took it from him.  Opening it, expecting a piece of jewelry, she was surprised to see an mp3 player in it.  Lifting it out of the box, it wasn’t just any mp3 player, it was an ipod. 

“It has the music that I know you like on it,” he said.  “You can listen to your music as you walk the streets of New York City.”

She scrolled through the song list, and sure enough, it was filled with dance songs, most from the 90s and early millennium. He had fill it with songs she would like.   She looked up at him, “Say you’re sorry.”

He blinked.  “I have,” he said, motioning to the ipod.

“No,” she put the ipod back in the box and held it out to him to take back.  “Say, ‘I’m sorry’.”

He took in a deep breath.

“You say you are sorry, and I will forgive you.  And we will celebrate our making up by dancing tonight.”  She wanted to make this entire thing harder for him, but holding his words against him was taking too much of her own emotion and thoughts.  “And you will never call me a witchdoctor again.”

“Je suis desole,” he said.

She smiled, feeling a weight lifted off her shoulders that his suffering was now done.  “Je te pardonne,” she said.  “Let’s go dance!”

As soon as they arrived at the cargo bay, the radio was turned on.  Of the mutants who were left, most had seemed to have recovered from their wounds.  The few that hadn’t, Phoenix check on, and was given grateful smiles and hellos as a reward.

When bodies began to congregate around the radio to dance, the absence of large number of mutants was painfully evident.   The heat that was usually produced by such an activity was many degrees less, despite the nightly heat.  The smell, of animals mingling, each distinct in their scent, mammals, reptiles, and insects, and even a few plants, was much less than it was, and in the background was the smell of a stale barn, stagnancy never having been a part of the smell before.

It had been a long time since the Phoenix had had her mind blank.  One of the few things that rested her brain was dancing, getting lost in the music.  She would just be getting to that place of euphoria, that place where her mind was silent, when the DJ on the radio would put on a slower song, and it would bring her back to reality.  Many of the mutants asked to dance with her, and she agreed, a rare occurrence.  She danced with Toaster, with Razz, even with Klashtooth, who smiled at her when they danced arm in arm. 

She agreed to dance with Chategris slowly, her arms about his neck, and his around her waist.  His paws took up almost her entire back with their width, and she could feel the fur on hands wetting with the sweat seeping through her shirt on her back.  The radio blared out, “Looking in your eyes/While you’re on the other side/(and I think that shortly I gotta thing for you)/You’re doing it on purpose,/wind it,/ work it./I can tell by the way that you’re looking at me, girl.”  They moved to the beat of the song, catching their breath after the frenzy of club beats they’d danced to before.

Chategris bent down, so his head was close to hers.  “I missed The Children of the Phoenix,” he said quietly.  After a few moments of a pause, he purred, “I have missed you, ma Cherie.”

She just swayed with him, not answering.  Contemplating his words as they danced, she realized, she had not missed him.


	39. Chapter 39

Medusa had tried for at least half of the night to avoid Razz while they were all dancing, but he seemed to keep cropping up.  He finally came up next to her, and said in her ear, over the loud music, “Please, Medusa.  Talk to me.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she hissed, not sure if he could hear her or not. 

“Please,” his voice was pleading.  “Just talk to me, that’s all I am asking.”

She frowned, and sighed.  “Fine,” she slithered off of the part of the cargo bay that was being used as the ‘dance floor’, and went to the back building, where the cars, motorcycles, and go-carts were kept.  She made it a point not to look behind her to see if Razz was following.

There was no one outside, there were so few people now that everyone was inside dancing or convalescing. 

She stood, facing the cars, and waited for Razz to reach her.

“Medusa,” he said slowly.

She could feel his body heat come up to her, behind her and to the left side.  He smelled as she remembered, she liked the way he smelled.  No, she had liked the way he smelled.  “Yes?” she said, still looking forward.

He came up beside her, so she could see him from the corner of her eye.  “I…” his stopped, seeming to be a loss as to what to say.  “I miss you.”

“So?” she turned to face him, so quickly that he started.  “What does it matter if you miss me?”

“I don’t know what I’ve done to make you angry,” he said.  “I want—“

“You don’t’ know what you’ve done?”   She backed up, moving her entire body away from him.  “You stood there, ready to do whatever Chategris said, no matter what it was.  We had a plan, it was a good plan, it was a workable plan!  You must have had a plan!  You’re the one who taught us how to plan! And you sided with Chategris.”  Her black eyes were slits, her mouth never closing fully, keeping her fangs fully exposed.  “You are a coward,” she hissed.

His own dark eyes widened at the accusation, and his head darted backward.  “I’m a coward?”

“You know you’re a coward,” Medusa felt her hurt rising in her chest.  “You let us walk away.  We were supposed to be your friends, and you let us walk away, rather than tell your great leader he was wrong.”

Razz was at a loss of words, his mouth opened and closed, about to speak, but no words came out.

“There is hardly anyone left, Razz,” Medusa’s voice was not only a soft hiss.  “If all of had followed Chatrgris to go in and bash heads, then none of you would be here.”

She waited for him to answer.

“You—you don’t understand,” Razz stuttered.  “I—I—“

“I understand fine,” she said, turning and heading back to the building.  “You are a coward.”  She turned the upper part of her body to face him again.  “My mother is right.  You aren’t our friends.  You are only friendly for what you can get out of us.”

Now that she was home, tired from dancing the night away, seeing his hurt face in her mind’s eye, she didn’t know what to think.

 

***

Making up with Chategris brought the battle and all the other issues that revolved around with it, to the forefront of her mind again.

The first thing she wanted to dwell on was the voice that sang in its melodic, deep voice that beckoned her somewhere, wherever it was the line it was attached to would lead her.  She enjoyed her explorations, of trying to hear it, of trying to get the unbidden thought to tell her more about it, to make the lines of light that she knew connected to other people.  She enjoyed hear the muffled nothing of the voice that spoke just out of her ears.

But, that wasn’t what she needed to dwell on.  She had avoided trying to figure things out, she knew she couldn’t do it forever.

There were not turtles at the battle.  The Battle of the Pretty Building, Arcos called it once.  There had been ninjas there, that was more than obvious, but there were not turtles.  There was nothing resembling a turtle.    What did that mean?

Were these Pretty Building ninjas working for the Kraang?  Or had she endangered herself and her children by participating in a petty fight with a rival gang?   She doubted it was the latter…the four armed robots were pretty good proof that these ninjas were in league with the aliens.  Who on Earth would have the kind of technology to make fighting robots with four arms?  They were still aruguing over if a supercomputer could be a person a chess.

If these ninjas were working for the Kraang also, it meant that the ninjas in New York had more than one base of operations.  How many bases of ninjas were there?  There could be dozens for all she knew.  Before this battle, she hadn’t encountered any of the mutants from that pretty building, nor the human girl who had fought alongside them.   They must be using the ninjas for some specific purpose, but what could it be?  What would ninjas have to do with genetically modifying people and animals?

The turtles seemed to be set up to come after The Children of the Phoenix, they were the only ones whom they’d come across.  They had always shown up when they were investigating a Kraang facility, and they had shown up right after their first encounter with the Kraang.  That all added up nicely.  It was the whys of ninjas and mutants that didn’t add up.

But it doesn’t have to add up, does it? she asked herself.  It just has to be.

And it was.  These the facts that she had in her hands.  She knew they went together somehow, she just couldn’t see how.

Then there was mystery of the voice, having told her ‘dojo’.  She had tried to forget the word, in order to concentrate just on the deep voice and not what it was saying, but it had to have something to do with all these ninjas.  But what?

There was also the dripping, and being lead into the sewers in her visions.  And her epic fails the two times she’d ventured into them.  What did the sewer, the dripping, have to do with anything?  Ninjas don’t live in sewers, she admonished herself.

She rubbed her temples in frustration, her fingers gently massaging the scars on the sides of her head.  I need another clue, she told the unbidden thought.  I need something else to help me.

But the unbidden thought was silent.

“Mama.”

The Phoenix turned at Medusa’s voice.  “Yes, Curly Que?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing in particular,” she said, cocking her head to the side and regarding her daughter.  “You’re thinking about something,” she noticed.

“Last night,” Medusa settled herself down next to her mother, her body in a loose coil, “Razz tried to talk to me.”

“I noticed that you went out back with him,” she replied.  “And came back in angry.”

Medusa’s face looked so sad, that Phoenix reached and stroked her cheek.

“He said he didn’t know what he’d done wrong,” Medusa explained.  “He said he didn’t know why I am angry.”

“Why exactly are you angry?” Phoenix asked.

“He chose Chategris over me!” she said as if it were obvious.

“What were you expecting him to do?” Phoenix asked gently.

“Come with me,” Medusa raised her voice slightly.

“Why would he come with you?”

Medusa was quiet, she flicked her tongue.

“What gave you the assumption that he would come with you?” Phoenix rephrased her question.

“Because…” she shook her head slightly.  “We were supposed to be friends,” she said.  “Good friends.”  Tears came to the snake’s eyes, “He was my best friend.”

“Oh, Curly Que,” Phoenix reached her arms out and held her daughter close.

Medusa let out a little sob.  “Why did he do that?”

“Because,” Phoenix tried to think of a mild way to say it, “because his life doesn’t work the same way as ours.”

Medusa straightened.  “What do you mean?”

“His life is much more violent than ours,” Phoenix said, not wanting to betray his confidence.  “The rules are different at the cargo bay than they are here.”

“I called him a coward,” Medusa confessed.

“That wasn’t very kind.”

“But it’s true.”

“But it wasn’t very kind,” Phoenix repeated.  “Different people have different ideas of what constitutes bravery,” she explained.  “It was very brave that he went out and fought that battle.  And I am sure he did many brave things during the battle.”

Medusa shook her head again, tears falling from her eyes once more.  “Why are you taking his side?”

Phoenix grabbed Medusa’s shoulders.  “I am not siding with him,” she looked her daughter straight in the eyes.  “I am always on your side.  Always.”  She paused.  “No matter what happens.”  She rubbed her shoulders, “I am just trying to help you sort it out in your head, that’s all.”

“I want him to be wrong,” Medusa said.

“He was wrong,” Phoenix said.  “He did, or didn’t do, as the case may be, something that none of us would have ever done.”

“Then why does it sound like you’re trying to make him right?”

“There is always two sides to every story,” Phoenix told her.  “Did you ask him why he did what he did?”

“Do you ask Chategris why he does what he does?” Medusa hissed hotly.

“I don’t need to ask Chategris,” Phoenix remained calm.  “He is not my friend, and he certainly isn’t my best friend.  He is my ally.  I understand the nature of our relationship.  Perhaps you misunderstood the nature of yours.”

Medusa laid her head in Phoenix’s lap, and slowly wet her mother’s thighs with her tears.  “I’m not ready to ask him why,” she said.

Phoenix stroked her head gently, “You don’t ever have to be ready, Curly Que,” she said.  “You don’t ever have to ask if you don’t want.”

They were silent for a long time, the only sounds Medusa’s sniffs and the “shhhhp” of Phoenix stroked her silkily scaled head.  Medusa finally lifted her head, and looked at Phoenix.  “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That noise?”

“What noise?”

Medusa’s looked far off, as she concentrated on her ears.  “It’s far away,” she said.  “You probably can’t hear it.”  She flicked her tongue in the air.  “It smells like…rats?”

“Rats?” Phoenix asked.  She then heard the thumping of running feet on the sidewalk outside the windows of the warehouse.  “That isn’t rats,” she said, “that’s Arcos and Aries running.”

The running came up the stairs, followed by “Mama, Medusa!”  The boys arrived, huffing for breath.  “There are giant rats in the city.”

“What?” Phoenix was positive she hadn’t heard right.

“Giant rats,” Arcos explained.  “The same kind that we fought in the sewers.”

“Only there’s hundreds of them!” Aries said. 

“No,” Phoenix shook her head, smiling.  This had to be a joke. 

“Yes,” Aries said.  “They’re eating people.”

“They’re what?” Phoenix stood up, and Medusa started upright. 

“They’re eating people,” Arcos said.  “We saw them grabbing people with their mouths and carrying them off.”

“Carrying them off?”  Phoenix felt the color draining from her face.  “The rats aren’t eat them,” she said.  “The Rat King is gathering people for his army.”

***

The four of them had grabbed their weapons and following the boys, roof-hopped their way through the city.   The four of them dropped into an alley, the adjacent street echoed with screams and the sound of running people.  They saw a huge rat run by.

“We have to help those people,” Arcos said.

“I’m having rat for dinner,” Medusa smiled, and darted ahead of the rest of her family to the road.

“Medusa!” Phoenix cried, the three of them running after her.

The road was in chaos.  Rats were everywhere, grabbing people by whatever they could grab ahold of, and dragging them away.  One rat, whom Phoenix was sure couldn’t fit, squeezed itself and its quarry down a sewer grate, the person screaming the entire way.

Arcos and Aries were already fighting off their own rats, Medusa was wrapped round one, constricting it to death.  Phoenix took out her slingshot and started shooting.

The bullets made soft “thhppps” as they hit the rats, embedding in their hides, but not seeming to do very much in terms of damage.  One of them turned its giant, deformed head in her direction, and stopped what it was doing, staring at her.

Then all the rest of the rats in the road stopped and turned to look at her.  He can see through their eyes, she thought, the memory his words flashing in her mind.  He said he could see through all their eyes.

 

People screamed and ran away, but the rats didn’t move, they all just stared at her.  Then they began to move forward, very slowly at first, and then in a burst of speed, leaping toward her.

She screamed, sounding exactly like the people who had just ran off, and began running.

Medusa appeared in front of her, her tremendously long body seeming never ending when stretched out straight.  Her fangs sank into the first rat she came to, grabbing it by the neck, and bringing her body around to wrap around it.

The next one in line grabbed Phoenix by her shirt, just as she was getting her knife out of her sheath.  She let out a cry as it lifted her into the air, her body waving back and forth.  The force of her body hit the sides of the rats face with each of its movements toward the sewer.  As she came around to the side, she reached out and stabbed it at its cheek, just where the bony protrusion of its face ended.  It let out a scream and dropped her, giving her enough time to scramble out of its reach for a moment.

She heard a slicing sound, and the rat fell down on its side, revealing Aries pulling his ax out of its side. 

“Aries!” Phoenix pointed, “behind you!”

Another rat leapt at her son a he spun around, his ax at the ready.

She felt, rather than heard, something behind her.   Whipping around, she barely evaded a huge rat that bit at her.  It seemed incongruent with how it moved, the bite was so gentle, it didn’t even make a clicking sound, but its body was at a dead lunge toward her. 

She dropped down, the rat overshooting her.  It landed on top of her, but its head was past her, so she was under its belly.  She raised her knife, and with a quick flick above her, she sliced the rat’s belly, spilling intestines onto the street underneath it.  It collapsed downward, and she rolled out from underneath it just before it hit the ground.

When she leapt up, she saw three other rats were coming down the road, their eyes firmly fixed on her.  Medusa came up from behind them, Phoenix hadn’t even noticed she’d gone farther down the street, and she flashed around one of them.  It gave a squeak, which was choked out by the snake’s squeeze.

The other two didn’t seemed to notice that their companion was being suffocated by a giant boa constrictor.   “They’re not paying any attention to us,” Medusa said, her head looming above her giant rat.  “They’re only paying attention to you!”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Medusa,” Phoenix said dryly, brandishing her knife in front of her, as if it might ward off the two rats headed toward her.

Aries ran over to his mother, followed closely by Arcos.  “They’re not going to have any choice but to pay attention to us,” Aries faced the opposite direction from Phoenix, where three more giant rats were closing in on them. 

Well, Phoenix thought errantly.  At least these rats aren’t kidnapping other people. 

The five rats all jumped at the same time toward the group of three.  From the corner of her eye, she could see Aries and Arcos each intercept one, their ax and sledgehammer both colliding with a rat at the same time.

Medusa released the rat she had, and sank her teeth in the haunches of one of the ones approaching her mother and brothers.  It screeched, and twisted around, taking its own great teeth and chomping them into Medusa’s body.  Medusa let out a hiss, muffled slightly by the mouth full of rat, and brought her tail around and began beating the rat with it like a club.  The rat let go of her.  She batted it with her body and tail again, letting go with her mouth at the same time, sending the rat flying into the wall across the street.

Phoenix rolled to the side, but ended up hitting the front leg of the rat next to the one she was avoiding.  It picked her up, holding her in both of its paws.  She stabbed at its hands, first on one side, and then other, until it dropped her.  But then the fifth rat was on her, and clasped her around the waist in its mouth, and began to run with her.  She could see the rat she’d stabbed in the hands running behind them, as if the mutants fighting its companions were of no consequence. 

Her back hurt with the effort to keep her head from banging up and down, but the rat’s hold was deceptively gentle.  It had wedged her in-between its front and back teeth, where its gum held her in place.  She stabbed at it with her knife, but the knife did nothing to the hard bone that covered its face.

She saw Medusa grab the rat running behind the one carrying her.  Effortlessly the snake dipped underneath its belly as it ran, and was around it like a spring, bringing it to a halt as the two of them hit the ground.

She saw Arcos on all fours chasing after them, his sledgehammer on his back in its strap.  It had been quite a while since she’d seen her son all fours, and a calm part of her mind, the same part that thought it was better the rats were chasing her than chasing other people, admired how he moved so fluidly in both the upright position, and the position that made him look pretty much like a bear with clothes on.

Arcos caught up to the rat, and jumped on its back, sinking his teeth into his back.  It squealed, and in opening its mouth, it dropped Phoenix.  She fell to the ground with a grunt, rolling due to the impact.  When she stopped, and looked up, she saw the rat rearing on its hind legs, Arcos holding onto his back with mouth and all four paws.  She rushed at it, knife at the ready, at the chest.  From the side, she saw Aries coming with his ax poised to strike, and the same time their weapons hit the beast.  It fell where it stood, making a pitiful noise and breathing heavily.

Arcos let go of it and jumped down.  “You OK?” he asked gruffly.

Phoenix nodded.  “I’m fine,” she told him, looking around.  “That seems to be all the rats here…”

“Why did they pay no attention to us?” Medusa asked, slithering up to them.  They could hear police sirens going off in the distance.

“They didn’t want mutants,” Phoenix explained, heading toward the nearest building’s fire ladder.  “They wanted humans, to turn into mutants.”

“Medusa, you gonna take one of them home?” Aries chuckled, as he climbed to the roof after his mother and brother.  “That’s one heck of meal.”

Medusa, who was slithering up the side of the building, shook her head.  “No,” she said.  “Those things tasted awful.”

 

 


	40. Chapter 40

Medusa waited, on the street, at the border of the Haunted Warehouse district and the Grey Cat's turf.   The earth shook slightly, with one of the many small earthquakes that were plaguing New York City lately, but she thought little of it.  There was a part of her that was afraid Razz wouldn't show up, that he would leave her waiting until nightfall, and she would slither home, defeated.  The other part of her was afraid he would show up, and what was it that would happen when did.  She couldn't see Razz in the distance, but she could smell him coming, his scent quickly getting closer and closer, until her jumped over the building above her.  He jumped several more rooftops before circling back, and seeing her on the ground below.    
  
"I got your message," Razz said gently. He was several body lengths away from her, as if he was afraid she would try and strike him.  He looked around, seeming uncomfortable on the ground.    
  
That was one of the reasons that Medusa had chosen the street as opposed to a roof.  She was not uncomfortable at street level.  She knew how to hide in the shadows, had been doing it since before she could even remember, no matter small or big she'd gotten.  She had sent a message with one of her mother's patients, that if Razz wanted to talk to her, he could meet here.  "So I see," she replied.  
  
"I--" he put an arm out, and then dropped it.  His arms weren't stick thin like hers.  Though slender, they were well muscled, like the rest of him, the sunlight creating shadows in alluring ways across his body.  His long neck held a little head, much like hers, with a soft, pliable skin on his lower jaw.  She'd never seen him puff it out, but she knew he could, simply from the amount of give it had.  His pale green skin, and yellow-green underbelly melded perfectly together, as if there no true defining place where the color changed.  As always, he had only denim vest on when out of the cargo bay, due to the summer heat.  It defined his shoulders, and the long, thin muscles of his upper arm.  "I--" he shook his head.  
  
"I said if you wanted to see me, I would be here," she spread her own arms, thin like twigs, to indicate her huge, long body.   She could snap in him two if she wanted.  She could swallow him whole.  She'd not met a single being, ever, that she couldn't crush if she could get herself wrapped around it.  And she hadn't met anything yet that she couldn't, eventually she was sure, get herself wrapped around.  
  
"I do want to see you..." he said softly, his eye ridges drawn up in consternation.    
  
Medusa looked at him with her black eyes, and waited.  
  
"I don't know what to do, Medusa," he said in a rush.  "Tell me what to do to make this better, and I will."  
  
"I don't know how you can make it better," she blinked quickly, she wasn't going to cry.  She was **not** going to to cry!  
  
"I don't even understand what I did," he took a step toward her, "I don't know what to do."  
  
Medusa shook her head, the tapered end of her body ending in the soft curve of her mouth.   "I thought you were my friend," she said, clearing her throat.    
  
"I am your friend!" he put in quickly.  
  
"I thought you were my best friend," she waited a moment, gathering her thoughts.  "My mother said that I may have misunderstood the nature of our relationship.  She and Chategris are not friends, they are allies, and therefore know where each other stands.  I didn't understand what she meant at first, but I do now.  She and Chategris never talk about important.  They don't talk about their thoughts, or their feelings, or tell each other secrets, or go off alone to just be together."  She looked up, and the clouds were puffy, floating by, oblivious to what was happening below them.  "I told you my thoughts, and my feelings, and some of my secrets.  I've told you things I haven't told anyone else--"  
  
"--I haven't told anyone anything you've said to me!" he interrupted.  
  
"I thought that was what a best friend was," Medusa went on as if he hadn't spoken.  "I thought you were my best friend."  
  
"You are my...best...friend," Razz said slowly during her pause, as if the words came from a foreign language that he had trouble pronouncing.   
  
Medusa couldn't keep her tears from falling, despite her fast blinking.  They fell in little rivulets over her small cheeks, dripping only moments after leaving her eyes.  "That doesn't mean you are mine."  
  
Razz took several steps forward, his arms outstretched to her, his face pained at her tears.  "Of course I am," he shook his head, his own eyes blinking rapidly now.  "How could I not be?"  
  
"You chose Chategris over me," she said.  "Who is Chategris to you?"  
  
"He is my leader," Razz's face shifted from concern to confused and back to concern again.  "Medusa, I don't understand--"  He came close enough to her to envelope her upper body in his arms, pressing her against him.  
  
She bent softly into him, her tears still falling, having to sink her body a little to become the same height as him.  "What if I never came back?" she asked.  "What if you followed your leader and never saw me again?"  
  
He took a long time to answer, so that Medusa thought he might not.  Her mind was blank in the space, she could feel the tears on her cheeks, a feeling she was not intimately familiar with.  "Is that the choice you are giving me?" he asked huskily.  
  
"No," she spoke into his shoulder, so much broader than her almost nonexistent ones.  "I am just asking what if."  
  
He felt him swallow, the soft skin on his lower jaw and throat bobbing as he did so.  "I don't," he cleared his throat.  "I don't know what I would do."  He swallowed again, and Medusa felt a wet drop fall on her body where she was coiled.  "I don't want that to happen..."  
  
"Then why would you allow it to?" she asked.  She closed her eyes, so she wouldn't have to see anything, so she could just concentrate on the warmth of his body and the soft feel of his skin as he swallowed.  
  
"What could I do if you made me make that choice?"  He straightened, and pushed Medusa's upper body away, and held her a arms length.  He was, indeed, crying, and his face was contorted in confusion.  "That isn't a choice, Medusa.  Don't make me have to do that."  
  
"What do you mean it isn't a choice?" she wrenched herself from him easily, like batting a fly away.  
  
"If I don't follow my leader..." his voice trailed off, "...Medusa, what would I do if I didn't follow Chategris?"  
  
"There are all kinds of things you can do!"  Medusa's voice was indignant.  "Mutants live all over the city, not just at Chategris' cargo bay."  
  
"Other mutants?" his voice was now derisive, the tears burning out of his eyes.   "You would have me live like a vagrant, constantly moving from place to place, sleeping in the cold?  With no one?"  
  
Medusa shook her head, "No, I didn't mean--"  
  
"That is what you think other mutants do, Medusa?"  He turned his head, and looked at her with a reptilian gaze.  "Do you really think that the mutants in the rest of the city live like we do?  Do you know how lucky you are to have a home?  To have people, the same people, everyday?"  
  
It was now Medusa's face to look confused.  
  
"There are so few groups of mutants, Medusa," his eyes blazed.  "Mutants stray alone, with no one and nothing but what they have on their backs.  They have no beds, they have no friends, they have no allies."  He took a step back from her, "They have nothing.  You would have me wander the streets with nothing rather than follow my leader?"  
  
Medusa shook her head slowly, "You know you could always come to the warehouse," she said faintly.  
  
"And what would Chategris do if I did that?"  He shook his own head, disbelief on his face.  "Do you know what he would do if his people suddenly started deserting him for the haunted warehouse?  Do you know what he would do to your family?"   
  
Medusa looked at him, not answering.  
  
"Your mother and he are not friends.  Allies can turn into enemies in an instant.  Didn't I teach you that?"  
  
Shame spread on the snake's face, causing her dark green cheeks to go an even shade darker with the red rising underneath them.  "My mother said your life was very different than ours."  
  
"Your mother is right," he said, "you should listen to her."  
  
They stared at each other, not saying anything, and the ground shook again.  Razz stumbled from the shock, and Medusa effortlessly darted in to catch him, the moving ground doing little to upset her equilibrium.  When the shaking stopped, she unwound from him, but when she got to the last coil, he grabbed her arm.  "Medusa," he said plaintively.   "You are my best friend...I want my best friend back."  
  
Tears began to flow from Medusa's eyes again.  "I want my best friend back, too."  
  
"Then come back to me," he whispered.  She put her arms around him, wrapping part of her body about his in a 'c', and laid her head on his shoulder.  He'd never felt a sensation sweeter than the weight of her chin next to his neck.  "Not everyone is as privileged as you and your brothers," he said, echoing words from years ago, "to live your kind of life."  He turned his head slightly, and kissed her near her ear hole, a delicate brush, his mouth barely touching her scales.   "You are lucky, Medusa.  I am lucky to know your luck."  
  
***  
  
Medusa came home very late that night, Phoenix stayed up for her, slight worry eating at the back of her mind.  She knew where she was and who she was with...but the mother in her was ready to rear at anyone who hurt her baby.  And there was the distinct chance that Razz would emotionally hurt her baby.  She kept telling herself, remember when you were young.  Remember how long these kinds of things took.  They took hours and hours of crying and pleading and drama.  But the waiting gave her too much time to think about the drama.  
  
She was quite sure, at this point, that there was no romantic relationship going on between Medusa and Razz, especially after Medusa had come to speak with her.  But there was too much...tension...in this break up for there not to be something there.  Medusa and Razz had been close for quite a while.  Perhaps they were taking it slow.  It never occurred to her that Razz, that a Grey Cat, would take it slow.  Or that Medusa would either.  Just because her brothers don't, doesn't mean she does, she reprimanded herself.  Or perhaps her brothers would if they really liked a girl.  Was it that Razz was serious about Medusa?  He was so much older than she was, and he was a Grey Cat, and...she shook her in the darkness.  Was she going to deny her children some semblance of normality, whatever form it came in, because of a human convention?  Because of a human prejudice?    
  
The waiting gave her time to look long and hard at herself.  Despite her complete immersion in a mutant world, she wasn't a mutant.  She could walk in daylight, on the street, where others could see her.  She could smile at strangers and say hello.  Arcos was right, she could go back to that world if she wanted, at any time.  Her children could never do that.  They had never participated in that world, and never could.  It was a foreign place to them, a place they could only see from the outside, only know from the outside.  They lived in a world of shadows and cast offs.  Those who walked in the light of day called them monsters, hunted them, attacked them, killed them, just like her beautiful Ailurosa.  They were all beautiful.  Every mutant she met was beautiful, in some sort of way.  They were a perfect combination of animal or plant and human.  While they might not be aesthetically a perfect combination, the combination they were was perfect, it blended so well that they were a living being, a living being like no other ever to have lived.  Some were a race unto themselves, with no other similarity in existence.   Some were lovely to the eye, some were not, but all of them were beautiful.  All of them had beautiful bodies, which she, **she,** had the privilege of tending.  
  
 _That is what life is_ , the unbidden thought came to her.  
  
That is what my life is, she repeated to herself.  Her life was a privilege.  She was able to not only glimpse, but swim in a place that most humans didn't even know existed.  It was in the shadows, often it longed for the light, but there was love in it.  There was laughter in it.  There was beauty in it beyond measure.  Her children were especially beautiful, both to look at and for their magnificent individuality of how their bodies were put together.   She ached so sweetly when she thought of it that it always brought her to tears.  She was a part of that, and she would not give it up for anything now.  
  
So who was she to deny happiness to any mutant, where they could take it?  She raised a family, albeit a single parented one, but it was still a family.  A mother and brothers and sisters living in a house with their own things and their own spaces.   They had a fridge, a stove, a dining 'room',  a couch, a TV, a gaming system, a VCR with tapes to play in it.  The children had bedrooms, with things that go in teenagers bedrooms.  She could have her own bedroom if she wished.  She taught them to read, to write, to do math, to build, to cook, to laugh at themselves, and to love other people.  She had had a semblance of normalcy.  She was a mother, she had a job.  It was a strange job, to be sure, but it was a job.  She was a healer.  She helped to heal the sick of body and tried to help heal those sick in the mind.  She had worked very hard, it had been **important** to her, to give them a childhood that had a semblance of normalcy.  Who was she to deny any of them that as adults?  
  
If Medusa had found someone with whom she could be happy, with whom she could have a life, a real life, with, then Phoenix had to be happy for her.  She had to accept that.  She wanted that.  
  
Then why did the thought of one of her children finding these things make her so uncomfortable?  
  
She sighed with relief when Medusa slithered in the window, in the very wee hours of the morning.  "You OK, Curly Que?"  
  
Medusa smiled, and came up to her mother.  "Yeah," she replied.  "Why are you still awake?"  
  
"I was waiting for you," she said.  "If you weren't back by dawn, I was going to send Arcos to sniff you out."  
  
Medusa nodded in understanding, and put her head on her mother's lap.    
  
"Did you and Razz talk?"  
  
"Yes," Medusa told her.  "Then we roamed the city.  We went to the Calmer building and ate pigeon eggs.  We went to the beach and listened to the water.  And we talked about all kinds of stuff."  
  
Phoenix desperately wanted to ask 'What kind of stuff?' but held her tongue.  She stroked Medusa's head and said, "Good.  Do you feel better?"  
  
"Yeah," Medusa yawned.  
  
"Go to sleep, Curly Que," her mother instructed.  "You heal when you sleep."  
  
Medusa smiled at the familiar refrain of her mother's, and slithered off to her bedroom.  Then, Phoenix went to her own bed to follow her own advice.


	41. Chapter 41

Whenever Phoenix saw a rat on her outings, that was sick enough to let her near it, she would do what she could to heal it.  Aversion therapy, she called in her mind.  She lived in a derelict warehouse, and all the other people she knew also lived in derelict places.  Derelict places were shared with all of them by rats.  Lots of rats.   There isn’t anything wrong with rats, she told herself.  People keep rats as pets.  Rats were warm, and some of them were obviously grateful for the attention she gave them.  They shared with each other, she’d seen them do it, and they didn’t intrude on her and her family’s space in their warehouse.   She became very intimate with the way they worked in her healings, with how their bodies were supposed to feel, how their glow that wasn't a glow was supposed to look when they were healthy. 

She couldn’t be afraid of rats.  She hadn’t been afraid of rats before The Rat King had come into her life, and she shouldn’t be afraid of them now.  But he could see though their eyes.  Any one of them could be a spy, _had_ been a spy.  Thinking of him gave her the creeps, made her shiver, and need to take deep breaths to steady her stomach.  They couldn’t help that The Rat King could control them. 

Occasionally, when she saw a gray rat with a pink nose and a pink tail, her heart would jump in her chest, and her eyes would feel they were about to pop out of her head from the increase in blood pressure.  It would only last a moment, until her rational mind could kick in over her instincts and tell her, “It’s just a rat.”

But how do I know that rat isn’t Tacitus?

I can’t be worried about every gray rat being Tacitus.

But whenever she saw one, that would be the first thought that popped in her head, “Tacitus.”  And that night, she was almost assured to have a nightmare.

She was in a cage, like the kind that one keeps a bird in.  It was set firmly on the floor, and looked flimsy, but when she tried to tip it over, it wouldn’t budge. All around her, like an amphitheater, she was surrounded by rats of every color combination she could imagine.  Tacitus was the only gray one, with a pink tail and pink nose.  He ran in and out of her cage, weaving through bars through  which she couldn't fit .  She reached for him in anger and couldn't get to him, he danced just out of her hand. 

  
The Rat King's voice, soothing from somewhere in the gloom said, "Tacitus is fond of you."

  
"Let me out!" she screamed.

  
"With my general and my healer,"  his voice was smooth and sickening  "I will truly be invincible!"

  
She opened her eyes with a start, and found herself in her bed, in the middle of the warehouse floor, the bed shaking, and several items crashing to the ground from the bookshelves and walls.  It lasted only a moment, and then it stopped.

  
All three children came out of their bedrooms, "Was that an earthquake?" Arcos asked.

  
"I think so," Phoenix got out of bed and began picking up debris.  "You can go back to sleep, kids."  She sighed, "I was already awake anyway."

  
***

  
Having Medusa smell her out seemed to attract birds.  Phoenix couldn't remember the last time she had so many bird mutants come to her for help in such a short amount of time.  They all had cold symptoms, and Phoenix couldn't figure out what was going on.  None of the bird mutants she came in contact with came in contact each other.  She was beginning to become afraid she was the carrier, when Aries came home with a pigeon. 

  
"Myra and I were gathering eggs," he explained, "and a bunch of the pigeons were like this one."  He held the pigeon out to her.

  
She took it, with a brief thought to his reconnection with Myra, and her absence in Phoenix's presence, despite that she must have been with Aries a short while ago.  The pigeon was fluffed up, its feathers had obviously not been preened for a while.  Its eyelids were half closed, and it had gunk coming out of the nostrils on its beak.   She laughed lightly.

  
"Why are you laughing at the bird?" Aries asked.

  
"It has a cold," she said gently.  "A bad cold, but just a cold."

  
"Can you help it?" he asked.

  
She looked up at her son, his hourglass pupils regarding her intently.  "He hardly needs any help," she said with a smile. "Hand me a handkerchief...and some garlic oil, please."   He did so, and she gently wiped its nose, cleaning out both of its nostrils.  She then dabbed them with oil, and put the pigeon back Aries hands.  "He should be fine in a while.  If he isn't in about half an hour, give him some more garlic oil."

  
So she infused as much garlic oil as she could get her hands on, and began dolling it out to the birds who came her way.  The murder of crows that had visited her tonight were no different, although they were more vocal.

  
"We have the bird flu," said one of them.  "I know we have the bird flu."

  
"You're the one who gave us the bird flu," said another.  "If you hadn't gone all about the park looking for food, then none of us would have the bird flu!"

  
"I didn't give us the bird flu!" number one protested, "it was her."  He pointed to another crow.

  
"No one has the bird flu," Phoenix explained.

  
"But we do!  We have all the symptoms," said the 'her' whom number one accused.

  
"No, you don't have the symptoms," Phoenix took a deep breath.  "Bird flu is influenza."

  
The ground shook for a few moment, bringing them all to silence, their eyes wide.   A few things fell off of fire landings and a steel garbage can clattered the ground, rolling off.  Then, the ground was still, and no one was worse for the wear. 

  
"Influenza kills people," Phoenix continued as if nothing had happened.  "None of you are dead, none of you have the flu."

  
"There has to be an amount of time before you get the flu and you die from it," said number two.  "We are in that time."  
"You're not in that time," Her voice was beginning to loose some of its normal compassion.  She took out a washcloth and some wash, "If you had bird flu, you wouldn't be able to get here.  One of you would be bringing me to you."

  
"But how would we find you?" one asked.  "We don't know where you live."

  
And you never will know, she thought quickly.  "The same way you find me like this," she said, her perkiness quotient in her voice rising.  "You just look around the city, and you'll find me."

  
She began to clean their nostrils, constantly bringing their attention back so they could continue it after they had gone.  More arguing and assuring of not bird flu continued, until she sent them away with a bottle of garlic oil and deep sigh of relief.

  
"Are they always like that?" Medusa asked, coming down the side of the building.

  
Phoenix gasped and grabbed her chest, "You're going to give me a heart attack, girl!"

  
Medusa chuckled, something in between a hiss and a laugh. 

  
"Yes," Phoenix answered her question.  "They're always like that." She finished picking up her things, "And there seem to be more of them every time!"

  
"You're a saint, Mama," Medusa said, coiling around her and starting back up the wall. 

  
"If I was a saint Curly Que," her mother replied, "I would deal with those crows much nicer than I do."

  
They jumped roofs, the fall air beginning to cool in the evening, and sometimes even becoming chilly if they were near the water.   Noises drifted up to them, easy and quiet, getting to Medusa's ears long before they reached her mother's.  Medusa stopped abruptly upon reaching a roof, and Phoenix froze as soon as she'd made the jump.

  
"What is it?"

  
"I hear..."  Medusa flicked her tongue, seeing if the smell matched what she was hearing.  "Raph."

  
"Raph?  That turtle?" Phoenix's voice was incredulous.

  
"Yes," Medusa moved forward slowly, her body undulating.  "He's by himself.  Or," she corrected herself, "he's not with any of the others.  He's with a human."

  
"Why would he be out without the others?" Phoenix asked, and then shook her head.  "That was dumb question, ignore that."  
She followed her daughter a few more buildings over, and peering down, saw the red-banded turtle with a...horror movie wannabe.   It was a gangly male, wearing a hockey mask on his head, with his face painted like a skull.  He had hockey sticks and other odd kitchen implements strapped to his back.  He was spray painting a wall in a graffiti mural.  He wasn't all that bad, the Phoenix thought, but he wasn't all that good either.  She felt Medusa looking at her, and turned her head to her daughter.  "What you thinking?" she whispered, a smile on her face.

  
Medusa's black eyes twinkled.  "We haven't had any fun together for a while, Mama," she said.  "Want to shake up a turtle?  Maybe we can rattle him out of his shell."

  
Phoenix clucked her tongue, "Medusa," she chided.  "He isn't doing anything."

  
"So?" Medusa blinked.  "His human buddy is defacing property."

  
Phoenix actually giggled.  "That's bad, Medusa."

  
"The other turtles aren't around," Medusa flicked her tongue.  "I can't smell them anywhere."  When her mother just gave her a sidelong look, she went on, "Just to shake him up.  He got the better of us last time."

  
Phoenix took a deep breath.  "Yes he did," she admitted.  "Alright, we'll rattle a turtle."

  
They came up with a small plan, with Medusa going to the far end of the alley, and Phoenix jumping back several buildings over and coming down the fire escapes to the street.

  
Phoenix sauntered up to the opening of the alley, and once she got there, leaned against the corner of the building and said, "You know it's illegal to deface someone's property, right?"

  
"What?" the boy, for she could tell immediately by his voice that was what he was, turned his painted face in her direction.

  
"It's also very bad manners," Phoenix continued calmly, with a smile on her face.

  
"Awww, not you," Raph took a fighting stance, and stepped in front of the human.

  
"You're worried about her?" the boy said, taking out a hockey stick. 

  
"She's tougher than she looks," Raph said quietly.  "And she's not alone."

  
Phoenix shook her head, thoroughly enjoying the game.  "Nope," she pointed behind the boys.

  
Raph turned at the sound of a hiss.  "Time for another danccccce lesssssson, Raph," Medusa drawled.

  
"You know these freaks?" the boy asked, coming up against Raph's back, so they each were facing one side of the alley.

  
"Unfortunately," muttered Raph.   He leapt toward Medusa, "I'm not the one who needs lessons, remember?"

  
The boy put his mask down, a farce of the skull painted on it.  "Looks like you and me are gonna dance."

  
"We are?" Phoenix hadn't even moved from her position leaning against the wall.

  
"Casey!" Raph called out while attempting to stab Medusa, "Watch out for her!"

  
"I got this," he said cockily, reading his hockey stick.

  
"You do?" Phoenix pushed off from the wall, and tried not to giggle.  Raph, she'd be afraid of.  This kid?  He was barely more than a baby, frightened and trying to make up for it with bravado, by the looks of things.  "What are you going to do?" she asked.  "Bop me over the head with a hockey stick?"

  
"Oh yeah!" he pushed forward, he was wearing skates, she hadn't noticed before, and yelled something she couldn't understand.  He swung down at her with hockey stick, and she easily moved out of the way.  The stick hit the ground, and Casey turned and came to a stop.

  
Medusa flicked her tail to hit Raph, and he leapt out of her reach, his feet hitting the wall behind him, and he catapulted himself forward.  Medusa twisted her body in a pretzel, and the turtle flew right through the middle of her.  "No," she answered his question.  "As I recall, you're the one who ended up off the dance floor."

  
The turtle let out a frustrated grunt, looking behind him at his friend.  The pause gave Medusa enough of a space to lash out with her whip, wrapping it around his arm, and flinging him behind her into the brick.

  
Casey came at Phoenix again, this time aiming for her side.  She was able to grab the stick as it struck her, and use Casey's force to send him flying off down the street.  She threw the stick off to the side, and called, "C'mon, kid.  Go home."

  
He took out his second stick, and several projectiles came toward her.  She whipped out of the way of one, and laughed outright when she saw it was a hockey puck.  She avoided two more that Casey hit in her direction as he made his way back down the street.  "You're the one whose going home," he said, "in a body bag."

  
"In a body bag?"  She waited until he was almost on her, a gleeful look in his eyes, then jumped nimbly over him, landing behind him and giving him a hard push to the back, sending him off in the other direction down the street on his skates.  "Where are you going to get a body bag, kid.  You look a fool.  Go home, it's past your bedtime."

  
Raph stumbled up from the wall from which he'd been thrown, and readied this three pronged knives.  Medusa cracked her whip.  They stared at each other, like lions sizing each other up before a fight to the death.  Medusa smiled and cracked her whip again.   "I didn't see you as the type to stoop to vandalism as a way to have fun," she said.  "Certainly not with a human.  And not with one like him," she motioned her head in the direction of Casey and her mother.  "Is he your pet or something?"

  
"Or something," Raph said, running to the side, and then in at Medusa. 

  
She dodged a strike with his three pronged knives, but she didn't dodge the kick he then sent her way.  Her body curved into a C as she crashed against the dumpster, cracking her whip at him.  He wrapped it around his wrist, and pulled at it, jerking it out of her hand, and causing her body to lurch forward.

  
"It's past your bedtime, Grandma," said Casey, recovering from his spin quickly, and pushing himself back toward Phoenix.

  
"Grandma?" her voice was no longer playful.  "Grandma?!  Oh, oh, oh," she shook her head, "Mama is one thing.  Grandma is quite another!"

  
"Casey, watch out!" Raph yelled, throwing Medusa's whip behind him.

  
Casey came at Phoenix, a potato masher outstretched in front of him.  He turned to the side at a skid.  She dropped as he came, and spun her leg out, upending him, causing him to fall on his front and skid down the alley.  He got up, turned to face off the woman who'd just knocked him down, and was hit with a punch in the kidneys.  How did she get behind me? he thought.  He fell to his knees, and felt a foot collide with his upper chest.  He dropped to all fours, before a blow to the head threw him sideways with a "Uhhh."

  
As Medusa was pulled forward her whip thrown away, Raph struck her with his elbow in the chest.  He turned, hearing Casey let out a cry, and as he did, Medusa brought her tail around from behind her and wrapped Raph in a body hug, pinning his arms to his sides.  She unhinged her jaw, her mouth now gaping open, and positioned herself above the turtle, lowering her head ever so slowly toward his.

  
Phoenix was looking down at Casey's unmoving body in disgust.  "Grandma...pah!"  She looked up when she heard a cry come from the other end of the alley, and saw Medusa about to swallow the turtle.  "Medusa!" she reprimanded.  
"Wha?" she turned her eyes to face her mother, but left her body unmoved.

  
"Don't eat him."  She came over to the two of them and looked at Raph with the same disgust she had at Casey.

  
"Why nah?" Medusa asked, her mouth still gaping open. 

  
"Turtles have salmonella," she answered.

  
Medusa hinged her jaw back, and Raph visibly relaxed, now that he was not immediately going to be a midnight snack.  "Can I crush him?" Medusa asked.

  
"That's not why we came down here," Phoenix shook her head, and regarded the turtle closely.  He was struggling to get out of Medusa's grip, to no avail.

  
"It'll be one less turtle we have to deal with, Mama," Medusa almost whined.  "Surely you're not going to let him go."

  
"There is a difference," Phoenix said very slowly, turning from Raph to her daughter, "between killing someone in combat and murder, Medusa."

  
"Then what do we do with him?" Medusa's voice was angry, she turned her black eyes back to Raph.

  
Phoenix looked around.  "Overturn the dumpster and put him in there," she said pointing.

  
"You're going to overturn the dumpster?" Raph laughed derisively.

  
"No," Phoenix said in a honest voice.  "Medusa is."

  
"How is she going to do that while holding me?"

  
Phoenix looked at her daughter, "Show the boy, Curly Que."

  
The giant snake rolled the coil that Raph was in closer to the front of her body, leaving the majority of the back free.  With Raph pressed up against her chest, she used her tail to easily over turn the dumpster, and even hold it up in the corner.  "You're lucky my mother is nice," she said to him.  "I would have happily eaten you."  She flicked her tongue in his face, almost hitting the tip of his beak.  "In you go, lover boy," she sang before popping him in and letting go of the dumpster with a clang.

***

Raphael and Casey Jones came through the turnstiles of the lair slowly, both with little moans.

  
April waved her hand in front of her face, "Uh," she frowned.  "You guys stink!"

  
"That's because Raph got stuck in a dumpster," Casey muttered.

  
"How'd you get stuck in a dumpster?" Leo turned from the television set to his brother.

  
"It was an overturned dumpster," he said loudly.  "And it took you," he glared at Casey, "forever to get me out of it."

  
"I had find something to use as a lever," Casey said.  "They're not exactly laying around, you know."

  
"It wasn't the lever that took so long," both boys made their way to the kitchen, April and the other three turtles following them.  "It was you lying unconscious on the ground!"

  
"You were unconscious on the ground?" April's voice rose as she spoke. 

  
"Don't worry, Red," Casey waved a hand in her direction.  "I had it all covered."

  
"Yeah, you had the road covered," Raph opened the freezer, and took an ice pack from Ice Cream Kitty and threw it to Casey.  Then, the took another for himself.  "Face it, Casey, you were out gunned."

  
"I was not outgunned," Casey said.  "She took me by surprise."

  
"Who took you by surprise?" Leo asked.

  
"Medusa and her mother jumped us," Raph explained, sitting down.  "Casey here thought he could take Mama down."  He glared at his friend again.  "He was wrong."

  
"It isn't like you were doing any better with Snakebreath," Casey countered.  "You're the one who ended up in a dumpster."

  
"At least Medusa had a weapon," Raph's ire was obviously rising.  "Your 'grandma'," he said with word with hostility, "clocked you with her bare hands!"

  
"Medusa's got a grandma too!?" Mikey's baby blue eyes went wide in horror, whether real or not, the others couldn't tell.

  
"No," Raph said.  "It was the mother.  He called her Grandma and got her mad, so she knocked him out, and made Medusa take me off guard."

  
"I didn't make nobody do nothin'--" Casey began.

  
"Stop arguing, you two," Leo sat at the edge of the counter, and looked at his brother and his brother's best friend.  "It was just Medusa and her mother?  The other two weren't there?"

  
Raph shook his head, "Nah.   They must have been having a girls night out or something."

  
"You know, Casey," Mikey said, his voice serious, "you should never comment on a woman's age.  I can see how Disembodied Arm Mom got mad at you."

  
"She's not Disembodied Arm Mom," Donnie said annoyed.  "She has a body!"

  
"It doesn't matter," Mikey put his arms across his chest, "That's her name."

  
"That's whose name?" Master Splinter strolled into the kitchen, and raised and eyebrow when he saw Raphael and Casey.  "What happened here?"

  
Raph glared at Casey again, and then in a gentler voice than he had been speaking explained, "We were jumped by Medusa and Disembodied Arm Mom Who Has A Body."

  
"That Disembodied Arm Mom has a body alright," Casey muttered.

  
Raph elbowed him hard.   "You called her a Grandma!"

  
"Well..." he looked down at his hand, as if it suddenly had something on it, "I was just biding my time thinking of something else."

  
"Casey was knocked out, Sensei," April said.

  
"And Raph was trapped in a dumpster," Mikey tried to stifle a laugh.

  
"They let you go?" Master Splinter asked, both of his eyebrows raised.

  
"Yeah," Raph stretched his arms above his head and winced.  "Barely.  Medusa was going to eat me, but Disembodied Arm Mom stopped her..."

  
"Why would she stop her?" April asked.

  
"Maybe because we let them go the first time we met them?" Donnie suggested.  "That only proves--"

  
"Don't say that proves that they're not the bad guys," Raph interrupted.  "Disembodied Arm Mom, uh, Mikey," he turned to his youngest brother, "give her another name."

  
"Nope," he shook his head.  "That's her name."

  
"She said they'd murdered people."  He looked at each of the people at the table, stopping at his Sensei.  "They've murdered people.  The good guys don't murder people."

  
Splinter went to the freezer, opened it, and took the cheesesicle that was offered to him by Ice Cream Kitty.  "No," he said very quietly.  "However..." his voice trailed off.

  
"Medusa packs a punch," Raph put the ice pack back on his head.  "And her mouth is really big.  She was going to swallow me whole."

  
"Don't worry, Raph," Donnie patted Raph's shoulder, "if she had, you'd have given her indigestion."  
  
  
  


 


	42. Chapter 42

Razz climbed into the garden window, the moon shining brightly behind his back.  "You have to see this!"  He held up a newspaper over his head, as if he'd won a trophy.  
  
"You found a newspaper?" Phoenix asked with a smile.  
  
Razz gave her sidelong look, "Yes, I did," he told her.  "And this was on the front page."  
  
He rolled out the paper, and the news line on the front said in big, bold letters, "Giant Worms Cause NYC Earthquakes".   Then in smaller letters underneath, "Are The Aliens Back?"  Phoenix and the other three all crowded around the paper, and read it.  
  
"How did we miss this?" Arcos asked?  
  
"I guess we were busy..." Medusa said.    
  
"This is what was causing all of those little earthquakes?" Phoenix shook her head.  "You think it's alien?"  
  
"You ever seen anything that looked like that on Earth?" Aries asked.  
  
Phoenix shook her head.  "No," she admitted.  "I haven't."  She looked over at the Kraang ball, still sitting in the bowl at the edge of the bookcase.  "Why didn't it light up, I wonder?"   
  
"Maybe something specific has to happen," Medusa suggested, "and it didn't with these worms?"  
  
"You know what," she went over to the ball and picked it up, and put it in her messenger bag.  The bag bulged as she put it over her shoulder.  "Bring the paper," she said.  "We are going to give Mr. Kurtzman a visit."  
  
"I'll come with you," Razz offered as they all made their way to the garden window.  
  
The four of them turned and looked at him, as surprised he said something.  It was Phoenix who finally spoke, "No," she said firmly.  "Not yet."  
  
Razz looked like he'd been slapped in the face.  "Wha--?"  
  
"Trust is an earned commodity, Razz," Phoenix explained.  "I am willing to trust you, but I don't yet."  
  
"I brought you the paper!"  
  
"And that is one penny in your trust bank," Phoenix straddled the window.  "But taking you to a human's house, a human I would like to remain on good terms with, mind you, is a lot more than one penny."  She swung herself upward to the roof, the bulging medicine back thumping on her hip as she did.  
  
Arcos and Aries followed her, but Medusa lingered a moment, looking at Razz's hurt face.  "This is why I was angry, Razz," she said gently.  "Now your piggy bank has only one penny in it."  Then, she, too, was out the window and on her way through the rooftops of New York City.  
  
***  
  
Phoenix went to the front door of Kurtzman's apartment as her kids made their way to the fire escape.  Kurtzman opened the door, smiled, and moved over to let her in.  "I was expecting you to show up sooner or later," he said.    
  
"You were?" she didn't like the sound of that.  
  
"Yes," he answered.  "I haven't heard much about the adventures of The Children of the Phoenix lately.  I figured that would be a sure sign that you'd end up here eventually."  
  
"My kids are waiting at the window," she pointed to the other end of the room.   
  
He looked toward the window and his eyes almost popped out of his head.  He ran over to it, and threw the window open.   "Someone is going to see you!"  
  
Phoenix had a guilty thrill at his alarm.  
  
"Nah," Aries said, climbing in the window.  "It's just some people in animal suits."  
  
Kurtzman closed the window as soon as the three of them were in, and then drew the blinds.  He gave all four of them a dirty look.  
  
"Since you knew were coming," Phoenix said, all business, "than you probably know we came to get some information on this."  She put the newspaper on the table, on top of the papers that already littered it, and showed the front page.  
  
Kurtzman looked down at the paper and nodded.  "It's a Kraathatrogon," he said simply.  
  
"A what?" Medusa asked.  
  
"A Kraathatrogon," Kurtzman repeated.  "It's a giant worm from the Kraang dimension."  He took out a folder, and held it to Phoenix.  She took it and opened it.  It had dozens of pictures, a biological field study sketch, and pages and pages of notes.  "They milk them to get mutagen."  
  
"They what?" Medusa said, her voice rising in pitch.  
  
"They milk them," he said matter of factly.  "From these mammary glands, here," he pointed on the picture to protrusions from the worm's side.    
  
"Mammary glands?" Phoenix asked.  "They're mammals?"  
  
"I don't know if they're actually mammary glands or not," explained Kurtzman, "but they milk them, like cows, for their mutagen."  
  
"So mutagen comes from giant worm milk?" Arcos' eyes were wide.  
  
Kurtzman nodded, as if they were talking about the price of apples at the supermarket.  
  
"So worm milk changes people into..."  Phoenix pauses, her own face showing confusion, "...other things?"  
  
"Sometimes," Kurtzman said.  "Sometimes it turns something into a pile of goo.  It's highly unstable, and doesn't work the way they want it to."  
  
All four of them nodded, "Do we need to be worried about these...Kraatha...Kraaga..."  
  
"Kraathatrogon," Kurtzman corrected.  
  
"...Kraathatrogons?" Aries asked.  
  
"Probably," Kurtzman shrugged.  "If they tried to bring there here in force, they want them here for a purpose.  My guess is they'll try to bring them here again."  
  
Phoenix looked away from him, trying to hide the look of annoyance on her face.  She wasn't getting any information that would help her, and she couldn't think of the right questions to get the information she wanted.  She didn't **know** what information she wanted.  "Maybe you can tell us more about this, then," she said, turning back around, and reaching into her bulging messenger bag.  
  
Kurtzman gasped when he saw what she drew out.  "I've never seen one of these close up," he breathed, his hands hovering above it.  "Where did you get it?"  
  
"What is it?" Phoenix asked firmly.  
  
"It's a communication orb," he replied.  "The Kraang use it to communicate from their dimension into ours."  
  
"How does it work?" Arcos asked.  
  
"I'm not entirely sure," he placed his hands on it, as if doing so would activate it.  He looked slightly disappointed that it didn't.   "All I know is that it picks up the Kraang's communications with each other."  
  
"It's only turned on once," Phoenix said.  "If it picked up all communications, wouldn't it have turned on more than just one time?"  
  
"That's interesting," Kurtzman put his hands in an offering position.  "May I hold it?"  Phoenix gave it to him.  "How long have you had it?"  
  
"We found it just a little while after first meeting you," Medusa said.  "In the rubble of that warehouse."  
  
"The Kraang are communicating with each other all the time," he said, seemingly more to himself than to them.  "It certainly would have picked up more than one communique in all that time..."  
  
"Maybe it works on frequency," Aries suggested, "like a radio."  
  
"Maybe," Kurtzman replied, handing it back to Phoenix.    
  
"Thank you, Mr. Kurtzman," Phoenix said, putting it back in her bag.  "We appreciate your help."  She hoped that her voice didn't sound as sarcastic as her thoughts.  
  
"Glad I could help," he said jovially.  "Uh..you're going out the window?"  
  
Phoenix turned to him, Aries sliding the window open.  "How else would we go out?" she asked.  
  
"I thought," he pointed in the direction of the door.  
  
"I rarely use doors anymore, Mr. Kurtzman," Phoenix replied, shooing her children out with a wave of her hand.  "Next time, I'll be sure to come to the window on the way in."  She then swung herself out of the window following the other three to make her way to the roof.  
  
"Well that was next to useless," she said as they jumped buildings on their way home.    
  
"Not entirely," Arcos said.  "We know to watch out for Kraatha...things.  We know that the last Kraathathing popped out from the sewer system.  So there is a good chance that might be where the next one pops up from."  
  
"You mean we have to start patrolling the sewers too?" Aries complained.  
  
Phoenix shook her head, "Bad things happen to me when I go in the sewers."  
  
All of her children gave her dirty looks.  
  
She blatantly ignored them.    
  
"And we know that that ball is a communication orb, and that it doesn't pick up all of the Kraang's communications with each other," Arcos continued, seeing not reaction from his mother.  "That's more than we knew when we came here.  
  
Phoenix nodded reluctantly.  "We need to go Kraang hunting again," she said slowly.  "We've been slack."  
  
"You've been out on clinic a lot," Aries said.  "And we've been training."  
  
"Training does no good if the Kraang get a stronghold that we can't break," Phoenix said.  "Tonight, we go Kraang hunting."  
  
"Where?" Medusa asked.  
  
"The TCRI building."  
  
When they got back to the warehouse, Razz was still there waiting, surprising all four of them.  All four of them also looked pleased he was there.  "Hello!" Phoenix called happily.  "It's nice to come home to someone."  
  
The other three chuckled, and Razz looked as if he'd been the butt of a joke.  
  
"What kept you here?" Arcos asked, slapping the lizard on the shoulder.  
  
"You wouldn't let me go with you, remember?" he said sourly.   
  
Medusa slithered up to him, and smiled broadly.  "Another penny in the bank," she whispered.  
  
He smiled back at her.    
  
"Shall we let him come with us tonight?" Medusa asked, turning to Phoenix.  
  
The human woman put her hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side.  "Do you have plans for tonight?" she asked Razz.  
  
"Not that I know of," he replied.  
  
"Then yes," she said, nodding.  "You can come with us."  
  
His smile grew wider and he nodded back.  
  
For the first time ever, Razz sat at the table and ate dinner with them that evening.  He looked particular uncomfortable sitting in the chair, drawn up to the dining table, set with mismatched dishes, glasses and silverware.  He kept looking at the little vase of lavender flowers, with a few sprigs of rosemary in it that sat in the middle of the table.  He was almost expecting them to say grace, and wasn't sure if he was relieved or not when they didn't.    
  
Razz couldn't remember the last time he ate a table, like a 'normal' person, to dinner.  Had he ever sat a table to dinner like this, like a family?  Now that he thought of it, he didn't think he did, even before he was mutated.  Maybe he did at Thanksgiving.  He couldn't remember.  The uncomfortable feeling inside of him grew as he thought of it, making his chest constrict.  The other four at the table sat and talked with a familiar comfortability.  They asked, "Pass the potatoes, please," and replied, "Thank you," when they were passed along.  Everything passed to the left, and none of them began to eat until all of them were seated at the table.  The place settings, while mismatched, were complete; a fork, a plate, a knife, a spoon, and a glass above the knife and spoon.  He felt that he was at a fancy restaurant, somewhere he did not belong, somewhere he did not know how to act.  
  
They discussed plans for the night as they talked, addressing each other equally, with the Phoenix giving into an idea of one of her children easily and without a fight.  Sometimes she wouldn't even give a suggestion on something, one of the other three would state something as fact, and the others all agreed with it.  He had never seen anything like it, except on television in 'wholesome entertainment' shows.    They even asked for his input if they felt he was quiet for too long, and Medusa asked him how he liked the meal of salad, bread, salami slices.  
  
"It's good," was all he could manage to say.  
  
The four of them smiled at him, as if indulging a small child.  
  
Clean up afterward was also a new experience for him.  They all put their plates in the sink, and Phoenix put a kettle of hot water on the stove.  The sink was half filled with water, then the hot water from the kettle added, and then Arcos and Aries washed and dried dishes, Medusa put them away, and Phoenix wiped down the table and chairs and swept the floor.  It was a scene, he could tell, that had been enacted thousands of times, built into muscle memory.  He was not allowed to watch it from the sidelines, like a movie, but was employed to help.  Phoenix had him hold the dust pan to sweep the crumbs up.  Medusa had him help her put the silverware away in its drawer.  He felt he was in a lucid dream.  When they were all finished, they looked at their handiwork proudly in the fading light, before gathering their weapons and going out the window.  
  
As Razz took up the rear, it slowly dawned on him why Medusa had been angry.


	43. Chapter 43

"They rebuilt the whole thing," Aries said, looking up from outside the TCRI building.

"That didn't take too long," Arcos muttered.

"I guess if you really want to build something fast, you can," Medusa commented.

"Another robot showed up on the sixth floor," Arcos said.

"It looks like they don't have the first five floors covered at all from the outside," Aries said, "and not at all from the front."

"I'm surprised they don't have the business men in the front."

"Hasn't the Phoenix been gone a long time?" Razz looked in the duct that she'd disappeared into.

"She has to find a place to open the door," Medusa told him. "She'll show up, don't worry."

"And if she doesn't," Aries put in, "we go in and get her."

"I'm not used to all this waiting," Razz complained. He hadn't realized how much of his 'battle plans' involved rushing into places and bashing heads.

"You have to wait to get in," Arcos said with a growl in his voice. "You go ahead and go in the front door with the receptionist."

Razz turned away from him with a scowl.

The all looked up, hearing a scraping sound above them. A window opened slowly on the fourth floor.

"C'mon," Arcos motioned to Medusa. 

She wrapped herself around her brother and slowly and silently began to scale the side of the building while holding him in a coil.

It was painfully slow for Razz. He watched her work her way up, Arcos crawl in the window, and Medusa dart down, all without a sound from the snake. She repeated the same slow ascent with Aries, and then was back down for Razz. 

"What's the matter?" she asked, as she carried the lizard up the wall. "You aren't afraid of heights."

"I usually climb buildings much quicker than this," he muttered.

"Looks a lot different when you can take the time to enjoy the view, doesn't it?" she teased. She kept her hold on him and slithered through the window.

Phoenix, Arcos, and Aries were standing by a door, the room they'd entered was filled with robots on the floor, each and every Kraang inside of them sliced open.

"What happened here?" Razz asked.

"They were charging," Phoenix said simply. "I just made sure they'd never reach full capacity."

Razz shivered at the casual way that she said it.

They opened the door, Phoenix motioning Razz in front of her as she took up the rear, her slingshot out. Each of them had their weapons out as they crept through the door to the hallway.

"This is creepy," Razz said. "This place looks just like an office building."

"It is an office building," Phoenix answered. "TCRI is a real business."

"A business run by aliens?"

"Apparently," Medusa said. 

"Wait until you get to where were going, though," Aries told him.

"And what exactly are we looking for, again?" Razz asked.

"There is a kind of jail on one of the upper floors," Arcos poked his head through the door that said 'stairs', and motioned for them all to move forward. "They were holding people there. We will look to see if anyone is there first."

"Then, we look to see if we can find anything to help us with..." Phoenix trailed off. What exactly did they need help with? "...defeating them in some way."

They reached the floor door, and each of them took a fighting stance as Arcos slowly opened it. There were no Kraangdroids on the other side, and all five of them sighed in relief in unison.

Razz looked around as they entered it, "This is not an office building." The walls and floor were now made of the strange, alien metal, and almost all the lighting was either white or a sickening pink color. There were doors and alcoves scattered about, and the configuration of the entire place was much more round than that of a regular building.

"Told you," Medusa muttered.

"There isn't anyone in any of these cells," Aries whispered, peeking in the windows of each of the doors as they passed.

"This one isn't a cell," Arcos motioned them over to his door.

Looking in the window, they could see several Kraangdroids with guns standing at various points in the room. None of them were looking at the door, and all of them seemed to be engaged in conversation with each other. In the middle of the room was one of the pink triangles, like the one that they'd tried to bring the large Kraang weapon through at the docks. The five mutants huddled to the side of the door.

"That's one of those portals," Phoenix said. "If we can destroy it, that's one less door they have."

"Maybe," Arcos said.

Phoenix screwed her mouth up at being corrected. "Maybe," she conceded. 

"Here's the plan," Arcos turned to the group. "We go in, try to keep the Kraang robots as far back in the room as possible. Mama, you'll stay in the back and pick off as many as you can." He then turned to Razz, "She'll try to keep them off of us so we only have to fight one at a time. It doesn't always work," he looked at Razz and then he gave his mother a rueful smile. She gave him one back. "Aim for the pink brain with the eyes, that is what controls the robot." He looked at each of them in turn and then nodded his head. "Are we all ready?"

The other four nodded, "Ready."

"Here we go, then!"

Arcos turned and flung open the door, crashing into the space with Aries, Medusa, and Razz behind him. Phoenix just entered the door, closed it behind her, and began shooting at the Kraangdroids at the far end of the room. She was able take out two of them before they even knew what was going on. She shot each of them right in the torso, pink goo flying from the bullet wound, and the robots falling forward. The other two in the very back of the room managed to move so the Kraang were not directly in front of her, and her bullets pinged off them before they sent a barrage of laser fire her way.

Arcos, the first in the room, cleared away three of the Kraangdroids with a swoop of his battleaxe. All three Kraang jumped out of their bodies, and began to scurry across the floor, only to be met with a flat end by being squished by the big bear. He felt a sting on his side as a laser skimmed him, and he twisted toward the assailant. A bullet bounced off of its metal body, causing it took look up to where the projectile came from. Arcos swung his hammer underhanded, and crushed the Kraang inside of the crumpling body.

Aries charged in with his head down, ramming right into one of the Kraangdroids that was near the door. He kept going until he hit the wall and felt warm goo splash over his head. When he looked at his handiwork sliding down the wall, he saw that he'd squished the Kraang inside. Three lasers ffiiiinnnnnggg'ed by him, hitting the wall. He whipped around, drawing his ax as he did so, and blocking another laser that was aimed for his torso. The beam bounced back at the Kraangdroid knocking its head off. The body fell to the ground, and the Kraang squirmed out, only to be stepped on by another Kraangdroid with a smash. Pink stuff popped across the floor like the guts of a bug.

"That is what is known as an accident," said the Kraangdroid to his squashed companion.

"This isn't!" Aries swung the ax with a swipe, cleaving the Kraang in two.

Medusa cracked her bullwhip, snagging the gun of the nearest Kraangdroid and pulling it out of his hands, sending it skidding across the floor. She then, on the return strike of the whip, managed to wrap the Kraangdroid's neck, and pulled with the intention of snapping it off, but her arm strength wasn't enough to do so. The Kraangdroid stumbled forward, her whip still attached to her neck. It grabbed the leather thong, and tried to pull the huge snake toward it, to send her flying. She didn't move. "Honey," she hissed. "You can't handle me." She darted forward, coiling around the metal body, and squeezing with all of her might. She heard the cracking of the strange, alien metal, and then the mush of a pink body being pulverized.

Razz jumped into the room, flying over the three siblings to land near the back, where six Kraangdroids stood to square him off. Immediately two fell to the floor, bullets in their torsos. The two still standing farthest from him turned to the side, and bullets pinged of off them, their attention on their attacker at the other end of the room near the door. The lizard swung his tail, and dropped to the floor, upending one of the Kraangdroids toward his rear. With this knife drawn, and his slender body outstretched, he leapt upon it, and dove his knife into the squid-like creature. 

He felt a burning on his tail, and turning to look saw smoking coming for a burned line that a laser had cut into it. He threw his knife at the offending party, and it stuck in the pink brain that controlled the robot. It didn't kill it, however, and the robot flailed around, its arms flapping as if it were trying to fly. A bullet whizzed by Razz's head, and finished the alien off.

Two more Kraang were in front of him, both of their attention on the Phoenix who was pelting them with astonishing speed. She was forced to roll and twist against the wall at the opposite end of the room to avoid the laser fire, so her aim was not dot on. She even missed the robots completely a few times. Razz jumped on top of one of the Kraangdroids, twisting its head at he did so. The head came off easily, and the force of Razz's weight caused the body to fall forward. The pink alien scrambled out from underneath it. Razz jumped to the previous Kraang, got out his knife, and threw it at the skittering brain-like alien. It skewered it.

He looked around, to see the fight was over.

"Eww, Aries," Medusa said, rolling up her whip. "You have pink nastiness all over your head."

Aries touched his head, and made a face when his hand came in contact with sticky globs.

Phoenix had walked up to the large pink triangle. "Look at this, kids," she pointed to the vertex angle. "What's that up there?"

The other four gathered around, all of them looking up. "It looks like what is causing the portal," Medusa said.

"Are those buttons?" Arcos asked, looking at the contraption intently.

"Only one way to find out," Aries almost sang, reaching up and pressing one of the lights that might have been a button.

The portal shrank quickly, becoming a tiny triangle and then disappearing altogether inside the device. The device then fell to the ground with a clang.

"I guess it is a button," Razz said.

The five of them looked at it, as if it might hurt them if they picked it up, when over an overhead speaker of some sort they heard, "Kraang. This is Kraang. Why has Kraang disengaged the portal to the place of Kraang without approval from Kraang?"

The five of them stood looking at each other with wide eyes.

"What do we do?" Razz mouthed.

Phoenix shrugged her shoulders.

"Kraang is having technical difficulties," Aries said in a monotone.

The other four looked at him like he had Kraang come out of his ears.

"The one speaking is known to be not Kraang," the voice said. The device then turned back on, the tiny triangle that had disappeared becoming bigger and bigger. This time it was on the floor, and the five of them had to scatter to keep from the pink light.

"Arcos," Phoenix drawled. "Make that portal nonoperational!"

The big bear swung his hammer over his head, and brought it down the device.

The pink triangle immediately disappeared.

"Time to go," Phoenix said quickly, running toward the door.

They managed to get to the stairs, Razz in the front sliding down the banister, when they met with another group of Kraangdroids. Razz took out the entire front row with a slice of his knife and a whip of his tail, the other mutants behind him taking out the Kraang within. He looked back, and cried, "What do we do now?"

"We need to get to a window," Medusa said. 

Phoenix pointed up. "In the air ducts!"

"We can't fit out the air vent at the side of the buildilng!" Aries shouted.

"But we can get to a window," Phoenix used the wall a jumping off point, looking much like a frog, until she hit the grate above her head. She grabbed it, and her body weight tore it off. She landed lithely on the ground, and was immediately seized by Medusa and in the duct.

Medusa put her down, and the five of them began scrambling down the pipe. In front of them, another grate was being taken off, and Arcos banged it down with his paw. They heard a loud thunk as the Kraangdroid hit the ground. "Here's a room," Arcos punched the grate down, and they all scrambled out of the pipe.

By the time the others were out, Arcos had dispatched the two Kraangdroids that were in the room, and opened the window. "Oopsie daisy!" he motioned for the others out.

Medusa wrapped her mother up again, and was out in a flash, Razz right behind her. Aries and Arcos flew out the window, followed by laser fire. They were on street level in only a few moments, and then out of danger. 

Razz looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head. "Those robots had brains in their stomachs that came out!"

Medusa set Phoenix down gently, and she laughed. Turning to Razz she said, "Now you know what we do when we go alien fighting!"

"That was nothing," Aries clapped the lizard on the back. "We've been through hordes of them!"

"And we got a scientist out of cell," Arcos chirped.

"This time, we managed to destroy a portal," Phoenix said, stretching her neck. "I hope that it meant something." She began to climb the fire escape of the building to get to the rooftops. Arcos and Aries followed her.

Medusa came up to Razz, her body surrounding him, a huge smile on her face. "That," she pointed in the direction of the TCRI building, "was a five dollar deposit."


	44. Chapter 44

Medusa flicked her tongue in the air, picking up the faint scent of soap and flowers and herbs that indicated the smell of her mother.   Her long, sinuous body moved with deliberate action, looking at the streets below the buildings to see if anyone was there.  Her mother, being a human, might not be quite as conspicuous as a giant snake catapulting from rooftop to rooftop.

She flicked her tongue again, and caught the scent of something vaguely familiar.  It was not, by any means, her mother, but she couldn’t identify it.  She heard a crash a few roads to her left, out of her way of her mother’s trail.  She looked toward the direction of her mother’s scent, and that of the crashes.  Finally, she twisted to the left, and leapt over the roofs until she found the source of the noise.

The familiar smell became blatantly apparent when she caught sight of a skirmish a building away.

The four turtles, the ones who the Kraang had sent after them, were fighting…a giant fly mutant.  The fly was wearing a salmon colored sweater, and spitting an acid at them.  “Retro-mutagen,” he was saying, “is mine!  Mine!”

Retro-mutagen?  What was that?  Medusa jumped silently, the only on her family who could do so, and a great point of pride for her, to the next building.  Staying at the back of it, lying flat against the sill of the small wall that (supposedly) kept people from falling off of the roof, she watched the fight unfolding in front of her.

She’d never seen the fly before, and he was buzzing around almost in a manic fashion.  Having known a great deal of insect mutants, she doubted that was a trait of his being a fly.  He seemed to be getting the better of the purple turtle, how held a leather messenger bag, very similar to the ones her mother used for her medical supplies, close to his side.

“Hey, Boxer Stackman,” the turtle that Medusa knew as Raph yelled, “Over here!”  Medusa had to fight back the sudden urge to pounce on him and bite him in the neck, and then leave him to bleed out.

She saw something fly through the air toward the fly.  “Baxter Stockman!” the fly raged.

“Whatever,” Raph said, leaping out of the way of a spitball of acid.

Medusa shook her head, and slithered down the side of the building, without being seen or heard, and flicked her tongue in the air to scent her mother again.  The scent had gone cold, and she derided herself for her detour, which had proven useless.   She had no dogs in that fight, so it didn’t matter to her who won or lost.  And she would not lose the bet she’d made with Arcos.  He had been able to find his mother every time he had set out for her.  She was going to do the same.

She slithered back up a building, so she was on the rooftops again, and caught wind of the Phoenix.  She began sprinting over the roofs again, her mother’s scent becoming stronger and stronger as she closed in on her quarry.

Her quarry was in a dark, back alley, toward the far end of it, with hardly any light at all.  Her mother shone a flashlight at her current patient, a mutant pigeon.

“You have to be careful,” he was saying.  “Those cats are everywhere, they’re just waiting to pounce on you.”

“I think you are too big to pounce on, Pete,” Phoenix said gently.

It was very rare that Medusa got to observe her mother, without her mother’s knowledge of being observed.  Pete had a high, annoying voice that made Medusa’s teeth hurt, but her mother acted as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“I don’t think so,” Pete said.  “I can see them eyeing me.  They’re creepy things, those cats.  My brother was eaten by a cat, you know?”

“No,” said the Phoenix sweetly, her hands busy on whatever injury she was tending.  “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true,” said Pete. 

Phoenix chuckled, and straightened.  “There we go,” she said.  “All better.”

Pete pulled his wing out, and then brought it back to his side.  “Yeah…” he said slowly.

“Do you have somewhere to go, Pete?” her mother asked in that same gentle voice. 

“Oh yes,” he said, shaking his tail feathers.  “I’ve found this wonderful flock of pigeons.  We live on top of an apartment building.  They’re all very nice, though they do talk a lot.”

Phoenix laughed outright.  “Really?” she asked good naturedly.

“Yes,” continued Pete.  He breathed in to say something else—

\--and Phoenix interrupted him.  “So you’ve found a whole flock of pigeon mutants?”

A canister must have fallen over an entire flock of birds, Medusa thought.

“Oh no,” Pete shook his rather disfigured head.  “It’s just a flock of pigeons.”  He spread his wings out to his sides, and took flight with a “Thanks,” thrown over his shoulder.

Medusa watched her mother for a few more moments, thinking that perhaps her good natured laugh was a farce, it certainly would have been if Medusa had been doing it.  But her mother shook her head as she picked up her stuff, and laughed again.   She slid down the side of the building, as quietly as she could, creeping up to the Phoenix.  When she got behind her, she quietly said, “Boo.”

“Ahhhh!” Phoenix leapt forward, twisting as she did so, drawing her knife.  “Medusa!” she chided when she landed.  “That was not funny!”

Medusa blinked at the speed with which her mother had moved.  “Sorry,” she answered.

“What are you doing here, Curly Que?” Phoenix asked, an edge to her voice.

“It was my turn to track you.  Arcos now has to practice on someone else.”

Phoenix took a deep breath and nodded.  “Please don’t do that again,” she put the messenger bags over her shoulder.

“OK,” she agreed.

“I guess this means clinic is closed for the night, eh?” her mother’s smile was back, bright in the darkness.  She made her way to the dumpster, to use it as a ledge from which to reach the roof.

“Let’s walk,” Medusa suggested, keeping her voice calm.  She didn’t want her mother to come in contact with those turtles.  They’d barely made it last time, she didn’t want to have to worry about a second encounter with just the two of them.

Phoenix looked at her, suspicion in her eyes.  “Why?” she drawled.

“I know you like to walk,” Medusa shrugged, and slithered toward the end of the alley.

“The warehouse is on the other side of the city,” Phoenix laughed.  “We can’t walk all the way there.  It’ll take a day and half to get there.”

“But we can walk for a little way,” Medusa said.  “While were in this little section of the city, where there aren’t any people.”

Phoenix did not look convinced.

“I’m good at staying the shadows,” Medusa winked.

“That you are,” Phoenix pointed at her.  “Alright then,” and she followed her daughter out onto the sidewalk.   “So Arcos and you are trading off checking up on me?”

“We aren’t checking up on you,” Medusa protested.  “We’re hunting you.”

“Oh yes,” Phoenix smiled and widened her eyes.  “That sounds so much better.”   Like being alone with Arcos, having the time to be alone with Medusa was the same thing.  She watched her daughter move, she could see the muscles rippling through her long, serpentine body, ending at the tip of her tail with a type of flourish.  Watching her move was almost hypnotizing, she moved with such a fluidity.  Her small head, her tiny shoulders, her thin arms, if seen from a distance, would truly make her look like a giant snake, if she was wearing no clothes.  She is an amazing creature, Phoenix thought, her eyes shining.  What a splendid, wondrous thing she is.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Medusa asked, her own reptilian smile donning her face.

“I was just thinking how much I love you,” Phoenix said.

Medusa shook her head.  “Mama, you’re crazy.”

Phoenix beamed.  “You’re so big now,” she looked the length of her daughter lovingly.  “Do you remember when you were little?   How you wouldn’t let go of me?”

Medusa chuckled.  “Yes, I remember,” she said.  “You were warm.”

“You weighed nothing,” Phoenix said quietly.  “You were so small…” her eyes looked far away, to a time that didn’t exist anymore.  She recalled the tiny creature who clung to her for dear life, as if she would die if she were not attached to her.  First her arm, then her neck and arm, then both of her arms, then her leg, then Phoenix had to pry her off and make her move on her own.

“Not anymore,” Medusa broke her from her reverie. 

Phoenix looked at her proudly.  “No,” she shook her head, “not anymore.”  Tears came to her eyes, and she blinked them away, the glow that was not a glow coming into her vision.  It illuminated her daughter with intensity it did to show vibrant life, not smudges, or blackness, just a bright translucence.  “You’re a grown woman,” she said, “doing grown up woman things.  You’re not my little girl anymore.”  She said it with a kind of wonder, as if she was amazed it could happen.

“Not that grown up, Mama.”  Her mother reached out to her and took her hand, so they swung their arms between them gently to the rhythm of Phoenix’s walking as they went.  “I still hold hands with my Mama.”

Phoenix giggled.  “I hope you will always hold hands with your Mama.”

Medusa remembered another time when she held hands with her mother in a similar way.  She was small, she wasn’t taller than Phoenix yet, unless she was fully stretched out.  Her mother had had to work to pry the snake off of her body, and Medusa remembered the shocks of cold when she did so.  It made her want to run and hide, smother herself in her mother’s hair, with the smell of soap and herbs.  On a summer night, not unlike this one, she had made Medusa slither along the concrete of the back alleys.  They were going shopping, and they had met a homeless woman who Phoenix had helped.  She had given her something, Medusa could not remember what it was.  Ailurosa, Aries and Arcos had full arms, and Phoenix held a bag in one of her arms, and Medusa’s hand in the other.

“I’m so proud of you,” she had said to her daughter, “you’ve been on the ground the whole time.”

It was the first time in her life that Medusa remembered feeling the flush of pride course through her body.

Phoenix squeezed her hand and said, “ I am so proud of you,” echoing her daughter’s memories. 

Suddenly, the world shifted underneath her.  Everything tilted to the side, causing the Phoenix to fall to her hands and knees.  She felt that she was about the roll downhill, in and endless reel, falling forever.  The sounds of the night were gone.  They were replaced by a rushing sound, and the drip of her vision of the sewer, now such a familiar sound that she could play it on the piano, if she could play the piano.  The smell of the warm sewer, and fresh dirt filled her nostrils.    The deep, staccato voice, mumbling words she couldn’t hear right, words she couldn’t understand, and she so desperately wanted to understand them.  She dug her fingers into the concrete of the sidewalk, knowing that wouldn’t hold her in place if she began to roll.  She felt bile rising in her mouth, her stomach lurched.  She closed her eyes—and then it stopped.

“Mama,” Medusa breathed, her face close to her mother’s.  “Are you alright?”

Breathing heavily, Phoenix opened her eyes, and the world stayed normal, flat and smelling of the city.  “I’m OK, Curly Que,” she said, standing back up.  “I guess my blood sugar must have dropped or something…”

“You ate dinner,” Medusa said.  “Maybe you’re overtired.  You’ve been doing clinic a lot lately.”

Phoenix breathed deep, trying to get her quickly beating heart under control.

“You need to rest.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Phoenix said.  She looked at Medusa and smiled reassuringly.  “I’m alright now.  Let’s go home.”

***

Splinter sat in front of his little altar, the place that held the few possessions he had left from his life before this one, breathing slowly and steady, his mind quiet.  Then, he seemed to tilt, he felt as if she might slide across the smooth, wooden floor.  He opened his eyes, and immediately the sensation was gone.  He sat still, listening, reaching out, but he sensed nothing out of the ordinary.  He took a deep breath, and stood up, looking at the picture of his wife and daughter.  He felt the love and longing that stabbed him every time he looked at the photograph.  Then, silently, he turned and walked to his room.

 

 

*** ** _Author’s rant:_** _I know you don’t care, because it is totally my problem, and I totally understand that.  But I need to get it out, because it is driving me nuts:  these turtles are not cooperating with my story!!  I have a distinct storyline, things that are supposed to happen, all the way until big space in TMNT2012 S3:E1.  I have lots of beautiful, wonderful, long scenes in my head that I like a lot, that I want to keep.  But these bleeping turtles won’t cooperate.  I can’t do those fabulous scenes, full of heart wrenching angst and love, if these blipping turtles don’t start behaving.  They wanted to be fighting the Kraang, and have Medusa see them do that, but that would ruin the rest of my plan!!  They argued, I had to fight very hard to get the Kraang to be Boxter Stackman, uh, I mean, Baxter Stockman, and then that scene ended up being, like 500 words shorter than the one the turtles wanted!  Sing to me, oh Muse, of how to get turtles to do what they’re told._

 


	45. Chapter 45

The smell of the fall was strong as it wafted through the medicinal garden.  The plants in it were dead, or on their last stages of dying, except for the evergreen juniper bush.  It hadn't yet gone to berry, and amidst the warm colors of the autumn, it stood out in its muted green.  The Phoenix pruned it, perhaps one of the last of the season, depending on how the winter would go.  It would go in the white vase with a chip in it that sat on the bookshelf, along with the last of the catnip.  The catnip was paltry, thin and sparse, but it was still a live, having not been beaten down by the seasons yet.  
  
She climbed back up to the top floor of the warehouse, the ceiling of which was covered with hanging herbs.  A few weeks prior she'd done her last large harvesting of the year, and everything hung in batches from strings to dry out.  The herbs that didn't need to dry, or that had already done so, were in their various stages of development.  Along one wall stood several peanut butter and mayonnaise jars with tinctures brewing in them.  She had managed to scrounge three full jars worth of honey throughout the year, and those three jars sat on the kitchen counter, a precious commodity used for only the nastiness of herbs.  Along the windows, other than the one that lead to the garden, sat jars of oils filled with herbs, their essences infusing into the liquid, just as it did with the tinctures.  It smelled so strongly of plant life, that Arcos and Medusa had complained they could smell nothing else.  
  
She inhaled deeply and smiled.  
  
Most of their time lately had been spent on preparing for winter, as it did every late fall.  They went to collect firewood when the trees were trimmed by the city.  They had to wrap the pipes in the plastic cloth they wove from plastic bags to keep them from freezing.  They wove squares to make into shoes for those mutants that the Phoenix came across in her clinics, to keep their feet warm in the winter.  Some of them refused to take them, and Phoenix strongly believed they must have mutated within the past year, and not spent a winter on the streets of New York City.   Many more were grateful for them, and a few even asked how she made the squares, and how the squares went together.  She had explained, but doubted her explanations were detailed enough to help those who asked.  I need to get diagrams, or carry a little loom around or something, she thought to herself.  
  
Her three children came from the lower floor workshop where they'd been tinkering after dinner until the sun went down.  "Ready to go?"  Aries asked.    
  
She put the catnip and the juniper in the vase, and turned around.  "Let me get my gloves."  
  
"I think we should take the car tonight," Medusa said, "it's starting to get cold."  
  
"We can't take that garish thing out on patrol," Phoenix said.  "Everyone within 10 miles will know were there.  And will be able to describe it to the police."  
  
"Like the police are going to believe that three giant animals and some little woman were driving a car with a great big phoenix on the front," Medusa argued.  
  
"No," she said.  "We won't be able to do as many patrols soon, we need to try and get out there and do as much as we can."  She dropped her voice to a more gentle timbre, "When the winter proper gets here, you won't be able to do much  of anything, Medusa."  
  
Medusa did not look happy at being reminded of that.  
  
The city seemed unnaturally quiet this night, as the four of them leapt from roof to roof, on their way toward one of the other warehouse districts.  There was little activity of either an alien or human nature.  "Something doesn't seem right," Phoenix had muttered.  She wasn't sure what it was, but it put at unease.  The unbidden thought, the voice that was but was not her own was silent.  She was struck with a stab of guilt at having not talked to it more, or having written.  It came from the same place as the poetry, after all, and she had begun to think of them as the same thing, talking to her in different guises.  Life had gotten in the way.  But the disquietude in her belly wouldn't subside as they traveled, and she tried to keep a good eye out.  
  
It was not her, however, who caught wind of a disturbance near them, but Aries.  He held up a hand, and maneuvered his large sheepy ears like small antennae.  Then he pointed to their right,  "There are Kraang over there."  
  
The other four followed him, and stopped when they got to the building the noises came from.  There was the sound of laser fire, but the windows of the building were dark.  "It can't be there," said Arcos.    
  
"Then where is it coming from?" Medusa asked.  
  
Aries waved his hand, indicating his siblings to hush, and moved his ears about.  "It's coming from that building," he said, and the leapt over to the roof of it.  The others followed, and he was already prying up the skylight to the darkened warehouse floor.  Once on it, they saw that back of the room was covered in Kraang bodies, both robot and alien.  Pink gunk was splattered everywhere, and a putrid, rotten smell was coming from the remains.  They could still hear laser fire, along with loud thunks.  "It's coming from underneath us," Aries said, looking around for a door.  
  
"The last warehouse had a set of crates covering the door," Medusa said, looking around, almost frantically.  "There aren't any crates here."  
  
Phoenix pointed to the far end of the room, behind the league of bodies.  "That door, it says stairs."  She ran toward it, avoiding whatever she could that was littering the floor.  She opened the door and the sound of laser fire and thunking grew louder.  There was, however, no stairwell.  A large drop lead to a floor below.    
  
Aries chuckled.  "I'd say ladies first, but I think you'll excuse me this time."  
  
Phoenix stepped aside and motioned for him to jump.  "Go right ahead, Lamb's Ear."  
  
Aries jumped down, his hoof like feet making a clink as he hit the floor below.  Arcos was right behind him, followed by Medusa.  Phoenix zigzagged down the sides of the shaft, until she was at the bottom.      
  
She rolled to avoid a laser beam, and hit several more bodies.  Looking up as she popped to a standing position, the room, which was larger than the one above them, she saw a spike covered shell, and a morningstar (Phoenix was momentarily proud of herself for remember the name of the weapon; Medusa had read about it in a romance novel and told her about it) flash in her vision between the Kraangdroids and lasers.  "Slash!" she cried happily, which sounded greatly out of place considering the circumstances.  
  
He glanced behind him before the ball on his weapon came down on the head of a robot.  He gave a gruff chuckle when he saw her, bashing several more robots as his morningstar returned to his front in an arc.  
  
A pink triangle glowed at the end of the room, where Kraangdroids continued to enter in lines, their guns firing as soon as they were fully through the portal.   The very first thing Phoenix did, while dodging laser fire, none of it truly directed at her, was shoot out the small portal device from which the triangle eminated.  Hitting it after three tries, the pink triangle disappeared, and the device skittered across the floor, smoking.    
  
Slash laughed, a swing from his morningstar taking out an entire row of Kraang.    "That's more like it!"  
  
It wasn't even a minute before to room was empty of any live aliens.  
  
Breathing heavily, with a wide smile, Phoenix ran over to Slash and flung her arms about him.  He didn't bend down to receive the hug, so she was hugging his leg more than anything else.  He looked down at her like she crazy.  "You're alright!" she exclaimed.  She took a step back and pulled her hand down his arm to take one of his hand in hers.  Both of her hands were able to hold one of his fingers.  "How did you get away?" she asked, "What are you doing here?  Are you hurt?"  
  
At the last question, Slash laughed, and shook his head.  "Nah, I'm fine."  
  
Arcos slapped him on the shoulder, his own smile wide.  "Glad you made it out," he said quietly.  
  
"You've already met my son, Arcos," Phoenix let his hand go and waved one of hers toward her kids.  "This is Arcos, and Medusa."  
  
Slash nodded his head slightly.  
  
"Kids, this is Slash."  
  
"Hello, Slash," Aries and Medusa said in unison, like school children answering their teacher.  
  
He chuckled again with his gruff voice.  "I can't say I'm not glad you showed up."  
  
"It looks like you were doing just fine on your own."  The sounds of sirens made their way into the room, and Phoenix's smile faded.  "Guess its a short lived reunion."  She patted the large hand in front of her.  "Be safe, big guy."  
  
He nodded, "You too."  Then he was up the shaft to the bottom floor of the warehouse, with The Children of the Phoenix not far behind.  
  
***  
  
The next afternoon, the four of them went to the cargo bay, to help with their winter preparations.  All of them would have admitted, had they been asked confidentially and alone, that is was really to make sure the Grey Cats had all that needed for the winter--a check up.   Phoenix had written down directions for how to use the precious few medicines she'd made for now dwindled group.  Then, on a second thought, she wrote down the recipes for a few of them also.   
  
Arcos and Medusa had made sure that their supply of food was adequate for the number of people they had on hand.  To their dismay, they had more than enough--they'd not even dented their supplies with them now being so few in number.  Since that task took them no time at all, they took a large group to get more firewood.  "You can never have enough," Medusa hissed vehemently.     
  
Aries went about talking to those who were newcomers to the group, getting an approximate size of their feet for a set of plastic slippers to protect them through the winter.  He also made sure a corner was made comfortable with scraps of material and pine needles to keep the hibernating insects warm in the coldest days of the year.  After all of that was done, they retired to the top floor lounge, which, it appeared, many more members of the Grey Cats were now allowed.  
  
Aries sat in a corner with Myra on his lap, talking to her quietly.  Arcos and Medusa played pool with Klashtooth, Razz, Crevan, Bunny, and several other mutants.  Phoenix sat on a love seat, near the luxury they had afford themselves for a job well done--a fire in the fireplace.  It was an impressive structure, Phoenix conceded, and must have been built by one of the members of the gang.  It worked well, heating the room and siphoning the smoke out of the makeshift chimney through the window.  
  
"Pour tu, ma Phenix," he said, holding a bottle of beer and taking the top off with this teeth.  
  
"Merci," she replied, taking it as he sank down close to her.  It had been quite a while since she'd had a beer, and wasn't sure if she still liked the taste or not.  She looked at the bottle, and then took sip.  "All ready for the winter," she said in French.  
  
"It would appear we have passed inspection," he answered teasingly.    
  
"It's going to get cold quick now," she said.  "Who made the fireplace?"  
  
Chategris pointed to a mutant at the pool table, "That fellow."  He was a dog, with a wiry coat and long thin muzzle covered with a dingy colored brown fur.  "He was a stone mason before he came in contact with the ooze.  He said he'd make us the fireplace if we gave him an upper level room."  Chategris' eyes twinkled, "How could I say not to that bargain with winter coming, eh?"  
  
"I need to trade something for him to come and make me a fireplace," she said, taking another swig.  "Our place is always filled with smoke, we can't get to draft out."  
  
"You do not need to offer him anything," Chategris' voice had an edge to it.  "I will tell him to do it,"  he shrugged, as if it was nothing, "and he will do."    
  
Phoenix clicked her tongue, and drank another swig.  "You know that isn't how I work."  
  
"You know it is how I work," he edged closer to her, and put his arm around her.  "Is the fire not beautiful in the darkness, mon amie?" he said quietly.  
  
"It is," she said, leaning into him.  He wore a jacket, so she couldn't cuddle up to his fur, but he was still warm.  The cold beer made her shiver, but the warm that it left afterward was nice in the chill.  "I am glad that you are prepared for the winter this year, mon coequipier."  
  
"Ahh," he chuckled.  "If I was your teammate, then you live here," Chategris said, taking a swig of his own beer.    
  
"I can't live here," she said, waving her hand in the air, her eyes on the fire.  "You know that."  
  
"You can live here for the winter," he said.  His voice had that purr in it that she was familiar with.  "I am having a fireplace built in my room."  
  
 _The same conversation,_ the unbidden thought said to her, without judgement or emotion.  _No need to have the same conversation._  
  
She giggled.  "What does having a fireplace in your room have to do with me?"  
  
"It will keep you warm," he blinked slowly, his head tilted in her direction.  "If I cannot keep you warm enough."  
  
She clicked her tongue again, and took another swallow of beer.  "Mon ami," she drawled.  
  
"You can have your own room," he said quickly, before she could continue with her thought.  "I will have a fireplace put in it."  He was quiet a moment.  "There are plenty of rooms to choose from."  
  
Phoenix turned to look at him, tilting her own head as she considered him.  He sounded genuinely sad about having rooms to choose from.    
  
"You know I would take good care of you," he said gently.    
  
She took a deep breath.  "I know you would," she told him, as she always did.  Her voice was also gentle, "But you also know that I wouldn't be happy here."  
  
"I would make you happy," his voice was a whisper, his face very close to hers.  The look in his amber eyes was intense, almost pleading.    
  
"Oh, Categris," she cooed, much as she did with her own children.  She put her hand on his cheek, and he closed his eyes, leaning into her hand.  She could feel the vibration of him purring, the sound almost too low for her to be able to hear.  "You would want me to be your woman."  
  
"What is wrong with that?" he opened his eyes.  "There are many who want to be my woman."  
  
"I can't be someone's woman," she put her hand down.  "I can be someone's wife," she said.  "But not someone's woman.  And you do not want a wife."  
  
"There is no difference," he whispered.  
  
 _There is no need,_ the unbidden thought said to her, _to have the same conversation._  
  
"There is a difference," she said, loud enough that the people at the pool table looked over at them.    
  
Chategris pulled her into him.  
  
"Being someone's woman is..." she waved her hand as she thought of how to explain.  Her brain was a little foggy, and thoughts danced just out of her reach.  "It isn't sanctified.  Being someone's wife is sanctified."  
  
Chategris chuckled and stroked her cheek.  The soft fur and warm felt good.  "You are one of the last people whom I would have thought would need something sanctified!"  
  
"No, not like that," she looked up at him, her brows drawn together.  "People get married at the court all the time and there isn't any religion involved.  But, there are witnesses, and a ceremony, and a promise."  
  
"What would a promise make anything different?" he asked.  "People make promises all the time."  
  
"It is the difference between making a promise to be someone's partner in front of witnesses."  
  
"So?"  he had an amused tone to his voice, as if he were discussing something with a child.  
  
"Witnesses keep someone honest.  Witnesses keep partners from straying."  
  
"I have known many married couples that have strayed," he cooed.  "Having witnesses did nothing."  
  
She had trouble explaining in a way he could understand.  Even in her brain, she was having trouble coming up with the words.  
  
 _There is no need,_ said the unbidden thought, _to have the same conversation._  
  
I don't think I've ever had a conversation about marriage with Chategris, she told it.    
  
_There is no need._  
  
"But they are breaking something sanctified.  Being someone's woman," she shook her head against him, "it is not a partnership.  It is demeaning."  
  
"I doubt that Myra would think it demeaning if she became Aries' woman," he purred.  
  
"And how would Medusa feel about becoming Razz's woman?" she asked into his neck.  
  
He was silent a moment, his purr vibrating her nose and cheek pleasantly.  "You have taught your children to be too particular," he said.  "You are too particular."  
  
"It is being particular that keeps us alive," she said.  
  
He craned his neck and brought his lips to her neck, "I can keep you alive," he said.  
  
She moved her head to allow him easier access to her neck, but she felt her heart sink with each additional touch of his whiskers, his lips, the tip of his rough, cat-like tongue.  "Don't Chategris," she whispered.  
  
"Why?" he asked in her ear.  "You want this."  
  
Her womb jumped at his words.  "Just hold me," she choked out.  
  
He withdrew from her neck with a quickness that surprised her, and drew her into him tightly.  "I would hold you forever," he said, "mon amour.""


	46. Chapter 46

True to her mandate in the spring, the Phoenix and her children trained during the winter as part of their "Operation Keeping Warm". It wasn't that this year was any colder than any other year. In fact, they had battled much colder winters, where it had snowed before Thanksgiving, and continued to do so well after Easter, but this wasn't one of them. The first snowfall was after Christmas, and the bitter cold did not appear until after New Year. 

Both holidays had been a tradition affair for them. Christmas, on the Winter Solstice, was celebrated with the extravagance of lighting a candle in each window, and hanging stockings on the sill of the garden window. Their stockings were actually socks that Phoenix had tried to stretch out when they were very young, and sewn their names on the cuffs. It was quite obvious by the look of the stockings that Phoebe Laferrier had not been very crafty. But she kept the original ones she had made all those years ago, as a tribute to her hard work in building their lives together from scratch. She put Ailurosa's stocking underneath the white vase with the chip in it, where, in the winter, she kept a sprig of dried catnip and the juniper. Now the children were Santa's Helpers, each of them would obtain something to put in each stocking, their Christmas gifts to each other. Despite the fact that Santa Claus did not visit their warehouse any longer, he was still quite the hero in their house.

New Year had them up until midnight, looking out the garden window, and on warmer years, in the garden itself, watching the fireworks that boomed over the city.

But now that winter was truly here, with no more holidays to celebrate, it was very difficult to keep motivated to get out of bed. Phoenix had them start their practice as soon as they woke up. If they didn't start right away, then it didn't happen at all. They would all cuddle under blankets all day long near the fire, or in Phoenix's bed. 

Medusa had the hardest time getting moving in the morning. On colder mornings, she would move so slowly it worried Phoenix, but eventually the snake would move at a faster pace, though never quite at the impressive speed that she did the rest of the year.

Phoenix would begin her own routine with 12 Sun Salutations. Her original plan had been that having to concentrate on her breathing while she moved would keep the cold at bay. It didn't. However, by the time she'd finished all 12, she was ready to take off her sweatshirt for a rousing game of Catch The Monkey. 

Catch the Monkey had become quite a complicated affair. Bonus Level Catch the Monkey consisted of one of the children chasing Phoenix while the other two threw items, usually plates, at both participants. The goal was to catch the monkey, and not get it with a projectile, or fall on the broken pieces of plate. It prevented Phoenix from doing any floor exercises after a certain point, or she'd cut her hands. She was cocky once and tore her hands to pieces, thinking that she could heal her hands easily. She couldn't get her healing to work fully, and went about with half healed hands that hurt to work, and hurt more with the cold, for a week.

They saw little of the Grey Cats, since they'd prepared them for the cold before the cold actually arrived. Aries saw them the most, making visits to the cargo bay in order to see Myra when they were on again, and go a several weeks without seeing her when they were off again. Razz, also moving slowly, but not as slow as Medusa, came the warehouse to visit her on days when the cold lessened. She wrapped herself around him, as she did with her brothers and mother to keep warm, sitting by the fire with a blanket over her. 

"It isn't any warmer here than it is at the cargo bay," he commented, putting his hands out to the barrel with the fire. 

"No one has frostbite this year," Medusa said. "So people must be keeping warmer."

Razz shivered in Medusa's coils. "Someone needs to invent a body suit for cold blooded mutants."

"How would it fit all the cold blooded mutants?" Medusa asked. "We're all shaped different."

"They'd be nanobots," Razz imagined. "They'd help our warm blooded parts work better."

"I wonder what mutants who are all the way cold blooded do in the winter..." Medusa's voice trailed off.

"Maybe they don't the survive the winter," Razz said practically. "Or maybe they can hibernate underneath something, like the insect mutants tend to do."

Medusa nodded sluggishly. "I am glad we can at least keep a little warm on our own."

"It doesn't feel like it," Razz complained. "I don't know if I can get back to the cargo bay today."

Medusa managed a chuckle. "We'll have to sleep here by the fire."

"Is this where you sleep?"

"No," she said. "We all sleep in Mama's bed."

"You all fit in her bed?" he looked behind them at the bed just behind the living space. 

"Sort of," she admitted. "Enough that we're warm. And don't want to get out of bed in the morning."

"Must be nice to warm in the morning," he muttered.

Medusa smiled. "It is."

***

One of the less cold nights found Phoenix in Flatbush for her clinic, speaking French almost the entire night. Some of the mutants there did not speak French proper, but rather Haitian Creole. Between the similarity between French and the native Creole, phrases in English, and hand movements, the meanings of both parties was made clear. All of her patients were mammals, which worried her. While the winter had not been particularly bad, she usually had at least a few insects, usually cockroaches. 

Considering Flatbush as part of his territory, it wasn't long before the leader of the Grey Cats himself showed up. I wonder who told him I was here, she wondered. She'd probably never know.

"Ma Phenix," he called softly, walking up to her with his swagger. She rarely saw him winter gear, and he looked a bit foolish to her with a toboggan on his head to cover his ears, and her homemade plarn slippers on his feet. "Look where your clinic has brought you. What a surprise."

"You're the one who came up on me," she said dryly. "It isn't a surprise."

"True," he replied, nodding to the mutant she was tending.

"Bonjour, Chategris," the dog said quietly.

"Bonjour," Chategris replied.

"Does he know all of the mutants in this area?" Phoenix asked the dog.

The dog looked from her to Chategris and then back to her. "Oui," he was all he said.

Chategris came up next to her, where she stood, and put his arm around her waist. "She is taking good care of you, non?" he asked the dog.

"Oui," the dog said again. "She always does."

"I am trying to sew, Chategris," she said without emotion. "Your arm is in my way."

His mouth curled into a snarl slightly, and he pulled her into him from the side. For a moment she thought she was going to have to fight him, a quickly coming fear beating in her chest. But then he let her go, and waved his hands in her direction for her to continue. "Of course."

She finished sewing the plastic shoes for the dog, and gave them over to him. "Here you go," she kept her voice kind. "Stay warm."

"Merci, Madame Phenix," he said, nodding at Chategris before bounding off on all fours.

She turned quickly to the leader of the Grey Cats, anger flashing in her eyes. "That man is afraid of you!"

"He should be," Chategris said casually. 

"Why?" she demanded. "I thought this was your...place."

"I have ties here," he said with a shrug. "I make sure that the mutant population, and some of the human, runs smoothly."

"What does it need to do to run smoothly?" her voice raised, and she had to take a deep breath the calm herself. No need to attract attention in the middle of the night.

"It is easy," Chategris replied, "for people to forget...their place."

He stayed with her for the rest of the night, nodding at each mutant who came to see her, and each mutant, if not outright afraid, differential to him. It rankled her that he received such treatment. She could reason away how he treated his gang; he gave them food, shelter, a group to which to belong. What did he give these people? If he gave those things to them, they'd be at the cargo bay. He doesn't deserve to be treated this way, she thought hotly. He is the one who should be differential to these people. They live a hard life, alone and cold. Did he act like a human gang? Did he take things from these people in return for not hurting them?

When clinic was over, signified by Arcos finding her, Chategris said, "You do not need to stay, Arcos. I will see her home."

Phoenix looked at him incredulously, and Arcos' mouth dropped open. Did he just tell my son what to do? the thought burst into her head like a lightening bolt.

"You will stay, Arcos, and walk with me. SHe turned to the leader of the Grey Cats. "You can join us if you wish," she said pleasantly.

The slight scowl came across his face again, but disappeared just as quickly. "Of course."

The walk was uneventful, if cold. Especially higher up on the rooftops, with the wind blowing against them as they jumped from roof to roof. "I can carry you, ma Phenix," he told her, "to get you home faster."

"I am capable of making it home on my own," she smiled, though she didn't feel like it. "Thank you, though."

He stopped at the edge of the haunted warehouse district, and took Phoenix by her shoulders. "You are keeping warm?" he asked, in what seemed to her like a genuine way.

She blinked at the unexpectedness of the question. "As warm as anyone else," she said, bringing her eyebrows together.

He looked her up and down, and then nodded. "Of course you are," he muttered. "Stay warm then, ma Phenix," he said, bounding off in the direction of the cargo bay.

***

Winter moved on, with several snowfalls and melts. The snow starting falling again softly, after a thorough melt, the kind of snow that sparkled in the sunlight. Much of the day was spent watching the snow and thinking whatever thoughts their minds brought to them.

Aries had trouble getting his thoughts to stop, unless he was engaged an activity that deeply involved his body--fighting or sex. His mind went over the same thoughts over and over, in a never ending circle that drove him close to crazy. He worried about his family. He worried about his friends. He worried about someone he cared for getting hurt, of not being able to help. He worried that his sense of smell, nothing like his brother and sister, would lead him to be unable to help; that his huge hands would not able to help. He worried he was not smart enough, he was not fast enough, he was not useful enough, he was not nice enough, he was not...He would scream in his head for thoughts to stop, but they wouldn't they just continue on a continuous loop, or find another loop on which to ride. They had many to choose from, and he had little choice in which one they decided to whirl. It chose would he have a family? Why should he have a family, he was a freak? How would he get one? How would he keep one? What would happen to this one if he had one of his own?...

Medusa blinked slowly, she had trouble getting thoughts to come, period. Her mind was foggy with cold and slow circulation, Arcos' body and the fire did little to warm her, it seemed. I wonder if hibernating would be a good idea, she wondered. She doubted her mother would let her hibernate. She would worry much too much that she was dead, and then Medusa would feel guilty when she finally woke up in the spring. But if she hibernated, then she wouldn't feel the awful cold. Maybe that was worth being smothered by her mother in the spring.

Arcos rubbed his sister's body absently, wishing that the warehouse did a better job of holding in heat. Patrolling the city in the winter was a mixed emotional place for him. It was only he and Aries. Medusa wasn't going anywhere, whether she wanted to or not, and their mother would not allow her to be alone in the winter. It was nice to be alone with his brother, they could talk about...brother stuff. They could talk about their mother and sister, women, other Grey Cats, and their experiences with all four areas. While his brother was usually forthcoming on his experiences with the women of the Grey Cats, which Arcos thought was quite too many, he was not so forthcoming with other things. The absence of a female presence, something that at almost never happened any other time of the year, Aries opened up about things that often surprised Arcos. Arcos could confide his own thoughts, while freed from prying female ears. They could complain about the Phoenix. They could complain how Medusa was doted over all winter, not mentioning the part they played in it. They could complain about Chategris being a jackass, about how they knew no jackass mutants, and what one might look like. Arcos could not, however, bring himself to mention anything about his own worries about their family. How he felt responsible for them all, that they remain safe. He felt helpless that he knew he couldn't do, he knew the Universe didn't work that way. Having cold Medusa wrapped around him, in a desperate effort to keep her arm each winter, not knowing whether she even could make it though a winter without a mammal to warm her, only made his fears all the more real.

Phoenix's thoughts drifted to the dream she'd had the night before, of Kraang brains all around her, reaching out to her with their tentacles. She tried to run from them, but she could never get to the bottom of the warehouse to escape. For some reason, in the dream, she couldn't get out the windows. Maybe there were no windows. She tried to bring a picture back in her mind of the dream warehouse, but she couldn't make it clear enough. Finally the tentacles got a hold of her, and when she awoke, her temples burned.

Night fell, and the tea got weaker and weaker from the reuse of the bags, and the snow turned into glitters in the dark. They all perked their heads up at the sound of a crashing noise in the distance, followed by the sound of screaming. They ran to the window nearest them, Medusa now around Aries, taking his turn as snake-warmer. More crashes, and more screams, and smoke rising from all directions in the distance filled the windows. 

"What's going on?" Medusa asked slowly, blinking her inner eyelid as if she was afraid she was dreaming.

"I don't--" Phoenix was cut off a barrage of laser fire hitting the warehouse, sending bits of brick flying off the bottom and second floors. 

From both ends of the road, what seemed like hoards of Kraangdroids marched, shooting anything in sight.


	47. Chapter 47

The sounds of dogs, cats, and rats squealing filled the air, along with Phoenix's own scream as the warehouse shook.

"I think they heard you!" Aries with Medusa coiled tightly around him, cried, running toward the stairs. Arcos and Phoenix were right behind him, each of them grabbing their weapons before running out. The building shook again, and a chunk of wall fell from the stairwell, exposing them to the outside. It took only a moment for the Kraang to spot them and begin shooting in their direction.

"To the roof!" Arocs yelled, all of them turning around, so Phoenix was now in the front and a Medus-laden Aries in the back. At the top floor, which smelled more heavily of smoke than normal, they all leapt for the garden window to the roof, and began running.

"We need to get to the cargo bay!" Aries grunted as he jumped, the extra weight on his body making it harder for him to do than normal.

"They're following us!" Medusa cried.

"I know they're following us," Aries snapped.

"No, I mean they're on the roof following us!"

A laser whizzed by them, and Phoenix thanked whatever higher power could hear her that the Kraang were all awful shots.

The group changed direction, heading toward the more crowded part of the city, only to be met with another group of Kraangdroids on the roof in front of them.

Being surrounded, they all drew their weapons, leaping out of the way of lasers. "You have to get off me, Medusa," Aries pleaded. "I can't fight with you on me."

The snake released her hold on her brother, and dropped like a lead coil to the roof. Aries used his axe as a shield against the lasers hitting he and his sister, before finding an opening to swing and hack one of the robots down the middle. His return swing did the same thing, and then he was in front of his sister again, using the head of his axe to fend off gun fire. Behind him, Medusa began to move slowly. Small, tight undulations rippled through her body in an effort to warm up.

Arcos and Phoenix had an easier time of it. While they had more Kraang to deal with, there were the two of them fighting. Phoenix immediately dropped to the ground and began shooting, bullets pinging off metal parts more often than they hit the pink squid-like thing in the torso. She had very little room to maneuver, and most of her attention was going to not getting shot. Arcos roared the terrifying sound he usually boomed as a battle cry. He leapt up and landed on one of the Kraangdroids, tearing its head off with the force of his landing, while his hammer came down on the head of the one just behind him. The one behind that grabbed him by the head as he recovered from the swing, and threw him aside. He felt a tearing in his neck, and pain slash down through to his shoulder, but he rolled as he fell, and hopped back up, bringing his hammer to bear on the nearest Kraang.

His battleaxe raised, Aries swung it back and forth in an arc in front of him. He sliced one down, then another, then through two more, receiving a punch in the side for his efforts. He dropped to his knee, and a whip cracked over his head, wrapping around the Kraangdroid's head and tearing it off. Looking behind him, he saw that Medusa had warmed up enough to rise off the roof, her arms having enough heat in them to work her whip, even if she couldn't use her body to fight. He rolled in her direction, lifting his axe as a shield once again. "Thanks, sis."

"Don't mention it," she hissed.

Phoenix pelted Kraangdroids with all she was worth. Two bullets at a time flew from the slingshot. The one that had thrown Arcos across the roof was now riddled with dents, and the Kraang inside of it was riddled with holes. That thing threw my baby! she fumed, as she rapid fired at it. She was still missing much more than she'd like, the quarters were so close.

Arcos cleared through some more of the Kraangdroids, emptying the roof of them. He rolled his shoulder and winced. In the distance, from the direction they were headed, they saw another flow of Kraangdriods on the roof coming toward them. "Let's double back to the warehouse," he said. "At least there we can have cover were familiar with." He took Medusa's hand, and she wrapped herself around him. He winced again at the pressure her weight put on his shoulder and neck, but it didn't slow him down.

Aries, however, was slowing down. He held his side, after sliding his axe into its loop on his back. Phoenix stayed with him, concern on her face. "How bad are you hurt?" she asked, having to raise her voice to be heard over the noise of destruction in the city.

Aries smiled over at her, "You know I'm made of rock, Mama," he huffed, trying his hardest not to grimace. "I'm fine."

Another set of Kraangdrouds started to come at them from the direction of the cargo bay, "We need to get on the ground," Phoenix ordered. They all dropped to road level, weaving in and out of alleyways and buildings that they were as intimately familiar with as an old lover with his lady's body. 

When they reached their road, Medusa yelled, "The Kraang aren't here!"

Relief flooded through both Aries and Phoenix, until their warehouse came into view.

Or rather, the remains of their warehouse.

It was now a pile of rubble. The back part of the warehouse, where their gym was held, was completely gone, now only a pile of bricks on the ground. They could see the pieces of their practice equipment amidst the smoking debris . The front half, which held their living quarters, was slanted toward the back, threatening to fall at any moment.

"Our house," Phoenix stood, her eyes wide in horror, her voice quiet. "Our house."

"To the cargo bay," Arcos turned, dropped to all fours, and began to run in the direction they'd already come. Medusa's head bounced against his back, near his shoulder blade, sending a convulsion through his neck with each bump.

Aries also fell to all fours, and let out a small cry. He muffled it as quickly as he could. After the first jump, he stood back up, holding his side, and waiting for his mother to catch up with him.

"You're hurt," she said, her voice hoarse.

"We have to go," he said, jumping over the building, having gotten his wind back. Arcos and Medusa were now several buildings ahead of them. The Kraangdroids didn't seem to have followed them, but they could hear laser fire close by at street level. Arcos and Medusa waited when they realized that the other two were so far behind them. "There's Kraang are somewhere over in that direction," Aries waved his hand away from the city.

Arcos nodded, "We smelled them," he said. 

"Their smell is everywhere," Medusa hissed.

A crash resounded from the direction of the city, and a plume of dust came barreling toward them. They all dropped to the roof, as the wall of powder engulfed them. They all coughed, and it took several minutes before it cleared. They were all covered in white, their creases and eyes the only things that blended in with the night. "What was that?" Aries asked.

The sound of laser fire came closer, and Medusa repositioned herself on Arcos. He groaned, and bent his head toward his hurt shoulder. "Try be careful with that, Medusa."

They were off again, clouds of dust pluming behind them as they ran, Arcos and Medusa quickly leading. As they got closer to the warehouse, the noise of destruction seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, and then it faded into the distance.

The front of the cargo bay was blackened with laser fire, and inside everything was strewn about. All but one of the tables were broken, every door to every room on the bottom level was blown out. The chair that Chategris had become so fond of during his convalescence was now smoldering in a dying fire. An acrid smell floated on the air, mixed with ozone and burning cloth. In the corner of the room, where Aries had so purposefully piled up cloth for the insects to rest in, was now smoldering like Chategris' chair. Several arms, legs, antennae, and wings stuck out, not yet consumed by the fire.

By the time Aries and Phoenix had arrived, they could hear Arcos and Medusa calling around frantically in the upper stories of the building.

"Myra," Aries' voice had an edge to it Phoenix had never heard before. He ran toward the stairs, only to be met by his brother coming down them. Medusa was no longer around him, and they could still hear her calling. 

"No one's here," Arcos' deep voice boomed in the eerie quiet of the large space. Except for Medusa's "Razz!" coming quickly down the stairs, the only sounds were the distant crashes and the crackling of the fires.

"Where could they have all gone?" Aries asked, a look of horror on his face. He kept glancing at the stairs, until Medusa emerged from it. "There is no one up there?"

Medusa shook her head. "Not a soul."

"There are no bodies?" Phoenix asked. Her eyes kept scanning the wreckage for someone, anyone. "Toaster?!" she cried, "Dezi!?" Only her voice came back to her. "Chategris?!"

"There aren't any bodies upstairs," Arcos said. "We checked every room."

"What happened to everyone if there aren't any bodies?" Aries asked.

"There aren't any Kraang bodies, either," Medusa said. "It's like the place was just trashed with no one except them," she gestured to the burning corner, "here."

All of them turned their heads to the fire in the corner, which popped as it caught flame to a previously unburnt part of an insect carcass. 

"What do we do now?" Aries asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

"If there are no bodies," Phoenix said, trying desperately to be calm. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, keeping tears barely at bay. "Then that means that they're still alive." 

She opened her eyes to all three of her children nodding, as if agreeing, this was the best idea to believe at the moment.

"If they are still alive, they would go to--" she shook her head, wracking it for any information. "Flatbush!" 

Recognition formed on all of their faces, and they rushed out the bay doors. "What's the quickest way to Flatbush?" Arcos asked as they ran.

Phoenix swung herself up the fire escape, toward the top of the cargo bay building, "This way!" She heard them follow her, and Aries saying, "I don't think I can carry you, Medusa." She squelched down the fear of him being too hurt to carry his sister with the thought of him being alright enough to run. If he could run, he could live. In the end, that was what mattered, wasn't it? The three mutants were easily able to keep up with with their mother in the front leading the way, and she imagined that Aries was probably grateful for the reprieve. 

There is nowhere in New York City that is truly devoid of people. People are everywhere, whether they are believable witnesses or not. The Haunted Warehouse District and the Grey Cat's Turf were no different in that respect. It took only a very little while before human dwellings began to show themselves, despite the amount of mutants that might be in the area. Screams began to get louder, laser shots became more clear, until individual voices, though none of them recognized, were carried through the air even to Phoenix's sad human hearing. Leaping over buildings, not daring to look down for fear of what she might see, she headed as fast as she could to the Haitian neighborhood.

They arrived at the edge of Flatbush, expecting to see mutants at the margins, and they saw none. It was filled with humans, all screaming and running away from a type of modified spaceship-riding Kraang. Instead of laser fire, they were shooting out a green goo. When it landed on something, anything, alive, the thing screamed in a horrible way, and then began to change into a great, pink, blob. The four of them stood on top of the building they were on, staring down. "They're shooting mutagen," Phoenix said in disbelief. 

One of the flying Kraang spotted them, and whizzed up to their level. They scattered, avoiding a shot of ooze. 

Medusa cracked her whip, wrapping around one of the nozzles, and pulled. The floating Kraang didn't move, but it gave Aries enough time to raise his axe and cleave it in two.

"There's more coming!" Arcos cried, pointing toward Flatbush.

Just as he said that, two Kraangdroids emerged over the lip of the rooftop. They began firing as soon as they could do so. Phoenix danced out of the way, feeling a searing pain her shin as she was in the air. She landed on both of her feet. While it did not hurt to put weight on her leg, the burn was constant and stung to the point it took her breath away. She managed to get our her slingshot, but was not in a position where she could fire and do any damage to the Kraangdroids.

Arcos engaged one right away, his sledgehammer swinging like a great pendulum. He wasn't close enough to do anything to either of them. A ping echoed off one of them, and it turned toward his mother, where she had her slingshot out and prepared to fire once again. The bear roared, but the noise was lost in the pandemonium around him. He hit the Kraangdroid in the leg, where it fell and continued to fire at him. He felt the pain in his neck tear at him, as he raised the hammer and brought it down hard on the Kraangdroid's torso.

The Kraangdroid that advanced on Phoenix did so with a slow, methodical movement, as if it wasn't worried at all that she could do it any harm. She wondered at that for a moment, as she let off two of her bullets in its direction, until she saw a movement from the corner of her eye. A flying Kraang spat a glob of mutagen ooze in her direction. She rolled toward the edge of the building, which didn't have a ledge, and rolled off. She fell through the air for a moment, and heard Arcos shout, "Mama!", before she rammed into a ledge. Her body swung with the force of the impact, and she scrambled to grab onto the ledge that had broken her fall, but couldn't get a hold on it. Her hands skidded across the bricks before she was free falling again. She hit the side of the building, bouncing with a grunt, before falling into a clothesline. She bounced, and felt the plastic cut into her as she did so. She yoyoed a few times, her voice going up and down with each "Ahhh!" that escaped her. She then began to flip around, tangled in the clothesline, before it spit her out, and she was falling again. She fell through a canvas awning, the give of the plastic fabric not giving her near enough space to make it not hurt. Then she heard a ripping noise, and her body hit the floor, her hip landing first, and then her stomach, knocking the breath out of her.

There was a moment of darkness, with no noise, like a blink in her brain, before she heard screams around her, like she had cotton in her ears. She couldn't open her eyes, and felt, rather than saw, people moving around her. She tried to take a breath in, and couldn't get her lungs to work. I am going to die, having fallen from a building in a poor community in New York City while it is being taken over by aliens. What a way to go, girl, she thought to herself. 

Then her lungs decided to work, and the faraway fog in her brain lifted along with her eyelids. She managed to get to her hands and knees, and heard Medusa cry, "Mama, move Mama!"

I can't move, she tried to say as her lungs worked to get air back into her system. I can barely stand up.

But she did stand up, and Arcos was beside her, his paws hovering over her body as if he was afraid he would break her if he touched her. A crash sounded. Arcos pushed her out of the way, using his bodyas a shield to protect her from whatever it was that caused the crash. She rolled from his grasp, gasping with each tumble that hit her hip. When she stopped, she felt smooth asphalt underneath her. She pushed herself up again, her head spinning.

Consider the floor, the unbidden thought said.

"You've got to be kidding me?!" she screeched, and then gasped in pain. 

Consider the floor.

She stumbled as she tried to steady her head. The world around her was spinning is strange directions, but her feet were on the ground. She could feel them there, but her equilibrium did not want to believe that she was standing firmly on asphalt. How the hell is the floor going to help me?

Consider the floor.

She looked down at the road, she probably would have looked down at it anyway with all the spinning her head was doing, and saw she was standing next to a manhole cover.

Consider the floor. 

The thought filled her with relief, a relief that the same thought, told to her innumerable times, had never given her before. It was immediately replaced by panic. "The sewer?" she asked out loud.

Consider the floor.

"The sewer!" Arcos yelled, having made his way over to her. He grabbed the manhole cover and tore it off.

As soon as the cover was no longer attached to the ground, the voice went away, she felt it hide, like a poem that had come to her, and she'd been too slow to write down, and now it was gone. "Bad things happen to me when I go in the sewer!" she yelled, the panic clear in her voice. Aries and Medusa bolted down the hole, and Arcos glared at her. A blob of ooze landed next to her foot, and her eyes grew wide with a different kind of panic. "I'm going down to the sewer," she muttered, climbing down the ladder. Arcos was right behind her, closing the cover behind him, and plunging them into darkness.


	48. Chapter 48

The sudden lack of light made the noises above them seem louder and more ominous.  Their echoes echoed down the tunnels which they couldn't see, a background to their heavy breathing.  The dark made Phoenix's head spin, or maybe it had already been spinning, she couldn't quite remember at that moment.  Her body tingled, and below that her hip throbbed.  It didn't seem like pain yet, but the rational part of her mind said, That's gonna hurt in the morning.  
  
A beam of light came on in the darkness.  Aries was holding a flashlight, and shining it down the tunnel.   
  
"You have a flashlight?" Phoenix asked, blinking.  
  
"Of course I do," he said.  She couldn't see his face through the shadows caused by the flashlight, but his voice sounded incredulous.  "Sheep aren't nocturnal.  Why would I go out and about at night with no flashlight?"  
  
"There doesn't seem to be any Kraang down here," Arcos said.  "I don't smell any."  
  
Medusa shook her head, "Neither do I."  
  
Hearing all three of her kids voices brought Phoenix back to reality, her reverie over Aries flashlight disappearing.  "Status report!"   
  
All three of the mutants laughed.  
  
"I'm fine," Medusa said.  "I'm just cold...I don't know how much I can move."  
  
"I'm fine," Aries said.  
  
"That's a lie," Phoenix said.  "You were holding your side."  
  
"My side hurts," he huffed.  
  
"How bad?"  
  
"Bad enough for me to hold it."  
  
"The question isn't how we're hurt," Arcos interrupted.  "It's can we all walk?"  
  
There was a moment of silence before everyone said, "Yes," in muffled voices.  
  
"So what do we do now?" Aries asked.  
  
"We can't stay here," Phoenix said.    
  
Arcos stood up, and rolled his shoulders.  He immediately regretted it.  "Then we need to get going," he said.  "Which way?"  
  
They each looked down each side of the tunnel, and a thump rattled the manhole cover above them.    
  
"That way," Phoenix pointed behind Arcos, and they set out at a trot.  Phoenix gave a high pitched grunt at her first step, pain throbbed at her hip and the burning in her shin started again.  Aries appeared beside her, looking worried, and handed her the flashlight.  Being in front, she shined it, unobstructed, and it bounced as they jogged.  
  
None of them could keep up that pace for long, the adrenaline in their systems dying down.   The sounds above them faded as the tunnel they traversed traveled downward.    Phoenix's teeth began to chatter, and goosebumps rose all over her body as the sweat dried on her clothing.    
  
"Mama," Aries said, his voice strained.    
  
She turned around, and saw Medusa lagging behind, her body moving slowly.  She blinked her eyelids sluggishly.  "I don't think I can go anymore, Mama."  She shivered.  "I'm so cold."  
  
Arcos walked over to her, and she lethargically coiled herself around him.  He dropped to all fours, and they began to walk again.    
  
Phoenix's body began to ache, the pain from her hip slowly spreading throughout the rest of her body.  Whenever she thought she'd managed to get a hold of one pain with her glow that wasn't a glow, another pain would start.  
  
"Where are we going, Mama?" Aries asked, his voice sounded faint to her.  
  
"I have no idea, Lamb's Ear," she said.  "We'll stop when I say we stop."  
  
"Like with clinic?" he sounded like a little child, asking its mother for reassurance.   
  
It made Phoenix's heart ache.  What kind of mother was she, she couldn't keep her children safe?  "Like with clinic."  
  
 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.  
  
I have to keep them safe.  
  
The tunnel evened out, and then emerged into several open areas, all having several tunnels leading in all directions.  She simply chose one randomly, over and over again.  Their footsteps echoed over and over again until there was only the sound of the next footstep.  The tunnel opened up to a space that did not have any other tunnels, only two large, sliding doors in the back.  As they went across, they felt it was dry.  Maybe it hasn't been used in a long while, Phoenix thought.  The doors in the back were slightly open, enough for her to wiggle inside to take a look.  Leaving the kids in the darkness, she shone the light around the room, much smaller than the one that opened up to the tunnels.   There was a hatch door, closed off to the side wall.  On the opposite wall as a small depression in the corner, perhaps large enough for Arcos to turn around in if he had his hands on his hips.  The other two walls were just plain concrete.    
  
_Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.  
  
Safe, she repeated to herself.  
  
"Arcos," she called, "would you open those doors so the three of you can come in, please?"  
  
There was a wait longer than she anticipated.  
  
"Arcos?" her voice rose in panic.  
  
"I'm getting it Mama," he said, grunting as one of the doors moved, squealing on its hinges.  
  
The three of them came into the room, looking around it lethargically.    
  
"Here we are," Phoenix said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, which wasn't much.  "Welcome home."  
  
None of the children said anything, they all sat down with their backs to the door that remained closed and sank to the floor.  Medusa held tight to Arcos, who was breathing heavily.  At seeing them sink down, Phoenix, too, put her back on the wall and sank down to the waste encrusted floor.  Too exhausted to care about their injuries, they all fell into a doze, with the flashlight shining at Phoenix's side.  
  
***  
  
She dreamt of music, the music of dripping water, and the smell of waste.  She could taste it in her mouth, the smell was so strong.  It was such a strong contrast to the beautiful, comforting, familiar music of the dripping water.  _Drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._     
  
Phoenix slowly opened her eyes to a dimly lit room.  It smelled just like in her dream, and there were flakes of something on the floor.  A flashlight lay beside her, shining into the middle of the room.  She touched the flakes on the floor, and realized that was where the smell was coming from.    
  
Then the night flooded back to her, and pain coursed through her body.  She couldn't find a part of her body that didn't hurt.  Her toes hurt.  Her ears hurt.  Even her nose hurt.  Her chin did not hurt.  She concentrated on her chin, but that didn't make the rest of her not hurt.  Then she decided to concentrate the dripping melody playing in the distance.  She'd become so familiar with it over the years, _drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._   
  
She sat bolt upright, despite the pain her body.  Her heart raced, and her eyes grew wide in the darkness.    
  
The dripping!    
  
She wasn't dreaming the dripping.  She wasn't visioning the dripping.  She was hearing the dripping, hearing it with her physical ears!  
  
 _Drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._  
  
She got up, groaning loudly as she did so, waking up the children.  She picked up the flashlight, and made her way to the open door.  
  
"Mama?"  Aries asked.  "Where are you going?"  
  
"Out there," she said, her voice far away.  
  
 _Drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._  
  
"Mama?"  She heard the children following her, the boys at least.  Medusa must still be around Arcos, she thought.    
  
She heard Aries take a sharp breath in, and the rational part of her thought, I haven't done anything to heal the children.  But the music of the dripping called her on, like the Pied Piper.  
  
 _Drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._  
  
She began to walk faster, and faster, the flashlight bobbing as she walked.  Her ears, her physical hearing, stretched out to find the source of the dripping.  Her body became desperate, as if she was dying of thirst, and this drip was a spring of fresh water.  She began to run, faster and faster, as fast as her legs would carry her, the pain in her body fading away with each step she took.  Her heart beat and breath came faster than they  should from her running.  
  
"Mama!" she heard Arcos call from behind her.  
  
 _Drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._  
  
She turned down another tunnel, running at full speed, and then skidded to a halt she came to a dead end.  
  
 _Drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._  
  
It was louder and more clear than she'd ever heard it.  It was a pipe dripping into a large vat of sewer water, _drop, drop, drip-drip-drip, drop._   On the worker's ledge that edged the wall, lay a prone figure.  She could barely see it in the pale light of the flashlight, but she was sure it was real.  She was sure it wasn't a vision.  She ran to it, the dripping in her ears all she could hear.  She grabbed its shoulders, real shoulders and gasped when she realized a pair of deep gashes in the shoulder closest to her.  She tried to turn it over.  It weighed a ton, it seemed to take her forever just to twist the shoulders toward her, and she was quite sure she wouldn't be able to twist the entire body.  She gave a great heave backwards on its shoulders, and the body flopped over in her direction, its face now visible in the pale light.  
  
It was a rat.  
  
It was a rat.  
  
It was a rat!  
  
This can't be, she thought, the dripping still loud in her ears, proving her thought wrong.  It's a rat.  It's a rat.  It's a rat.  Of all mutants in creation, the dripping, the beautiful, musical dripping, _her_ dripping lead her to a rat!  She snatched her hands away from its shoulders, and pushed against it with her feet, sending her farther away from it.  Her hands balled into fists, and she let out a frustrated cry.  It was rat.  After all this time, years of listening, she was brought to a god damned rat!  
  
"Mama," she heard Arcos come up, his voice concerned.  "What is it?"  He gasped when he saw the figure on the ledge next to her.  
  
Medusa, her head on top of Arcos, flicked her tongue and blinked her black eyes slowly.  
  
Aries, running behind them, skidded to a halt, his eyes wide.  "It's a mutant," he said.  
  
"It's a rat mutant," Medusa said.  
  
"Is he dead?" Aries asked.  
  
"It's a she, she's wearing a dress," Arcos said.  
  
"She isn't dead," Medusa informed them.  "At least, she doesn't smell dead."  
  
Phoenix edged closer to her, her butt scraping against the concrete, her feet in front.  When the figure didn't move, she came to her knees and leaned over her.  "She's been a fight," she said softly, her heart in her throat.  "A bad fight."  She was slashed on the ribcage also, the same pair of slashes as her shoulder.  The lacerations reminded her of Ailurosa, curved gashes all over the girl's body, bleeding out the street.  "We have to help her," she said.  Had she said that?  Was it her talking?  She couldn't help her.  She was a rat!  
  
"We can't help her," Aries echoed her thought.  "She's a rat!"  
  
"Throw her back in the water," Arcos said, coming toward her to do so.  
  
"No!" Phoenix was surprised by her own vehemence.  It wasn't her fault she was a rat.  It wasn't her fault the Rat King had somehow gotten a hold of her and changed the poor woman into a rat to command.    
  
Arcos looked at her like she had Kraang coming out of her ears.  
  
"We have to help her," Phoenix steadied her voice.  "Help me pick her up."  
  
None of the children moved.  
  
She looked from face to face to face, and felt her ire rising.   
  
"You need to get off me, Medusa," Arcos muttered.  His sister slithered off of him, blinking slowly as he stepped over her.  
  
He went to the rat's head, and Aries grabbed her feet.  "One, two, three," Aries said quietly before both boys heaved.  
  
"Oh my god, she's heavy!" Arcos dropped her shoulders and grabbed his neck.  
  
"Careful!" Phoenix snapped, before looking up to her son.  "Are you hurt?"  
  
"Not enough to not carry someone," he grunted, lifting her up again by the armpits.  
  
They began to walk back the way they'd come.  Phoenix handed Medusa the flashlight, she slithered slowly in the back, shining it in front of them.  
  
Phoenix grabbed the rat's tail, which was dragging the ground.  Her tail weighed so much it made every muscle in her body scream.  Guilt crept up her spine at snapping at Arcos.  
I  
"That helps, Mama," Arcos told her.   
  
She smiled at him apologetically.  From her position to the side, holding the rat's tail, she got a clear view of what was under the dress.  "She's a he," she told them.  
  
"Great," Aries drawled, "great to know."  He raised his eyes from the rat's feet, at which he'd been looking, to his brother's eyes.  
  
Despite his pain, Arcos laughed.   "I bet you wish you were at the heavy end now, don't you?"  
  
Aries huffed quietly.  
  
Their progress to back to the room they'd found seemed to take forever.  Phoenix was sure that the distance must have magically stretched out.  Eventually they made it to the larger room, and dragged themselves along until the got the double rolling doors.  Once inside, the boys unceremoniously dropped the rat onto his stomach, and both collapsed against the wall.  Arcos was blinking rapidly to keep tears from coming down his eyes, and Aries held his side, trying to breath shallowly.    
  
Phoenix dropped his tail and fell to her knees.  Every cell in her body hurt, even her chin now.  She sank onto her side next to the rat, and heard herself say, "Children, I need to help heal you."  She didn't hear any replies before sleep overcame her.


	49. Chapter 49

Everything hurt. Phoenix didn't know a body could hurt this bad.

She'd broken her wrist before, when she'd landed wrong during floor exercises.

She'd broken her leg before, when she'd landed wrong off the balance beam.

She'd pulled the muscles in her fingers when she'd grabbed the bars incorrectly, because she thought she knew better than her coach.

She'd give birth to two children. She'd proudly tell anyone who asked that she did so without anesthesia.

None of those things compared to the hurt she was feeling now.

She had to move. She knew she had to move, that she couldn't keep laying on this stinking, cold concrete. She managed to make her arms obey her command, and heaved herself to her hands and knees. The effort brought tears to her eyes, but they didn't spill over. She turned her head to the side, and saw the rat they'd dragged in, still on his stomach, breathing steadily. Looking the other way, and saw all three of her children. Medusa was asleep wrapped up over Arcos. Aries lay with his head on one of her coils, drooling on her in his slumber. Arcos, however, was wake, and blinked at her in the now very dim light.

"Arcos," she said. It hurt to talk, her mouth was so dry. "Where are you hurt?"

"You need to do the magic on yourself first," he said, his voice more gravelly than normal. "You're the one who fell off a building."

I fell off a building, her mind repeated.

Safe, said the unbidden thought, and again relief flooded through her like the sweet water her mouth craved.

"I'm alright," she said. "Nothing is broken, and nothing is sprained. I'm just all battered and bruised." She managed a smile to try and convince him.

"You look all battered and bruised," he said, returning her smile.

She managed to inch toward him, each movement more painful than the last. The pain was an aching, sharp and then dull, then sharp in a different area that had just been dull. When she reached her son, she put her hand on the side of his muzzle. "Where are you hurt?" she asked again.

"All over," he said very quietly.

She couldn't very well do anything about hurting all over, now could she? She closed her eyes, trying her quell her irritation. Taking several deep breaths, trying to clear her mind of thoughts, she opened them again and tried to look through soft eyes at the glow that was not a glow. It didn't happen. She tried a second time, and when it didn't work again, tears filled her eyes, this time of desperation. Please, she begged the unbidden thought. Please, I have to do this. I cannot help him if I can't see what I am supposed to help.

Safe, the unbidden thought told her again.

With the word said to her, in the place where the poetry came, she felt relief fill her once more, starting at her chest, and flowing slowly outward to her extremities. It felt like an embrace from a caring mother who could make all the bad things in the world go away with a word and a touch.

When she opened her eyes again, she could see Arcos' glow, a deep, amorphous smudge going from the jaw to his breast. She put her hand on his shoulder, which Medusa had left exposed, probably because it hurt him to have any pressure on it. She felt the tingling in her hands start, and then, all the little glowing ants that resided in her, that carried the healing from her to the other person, began to crawl out of her and into her son, setting to work to do whatever it was that they did that would help to make him better.

He moved his head from side to side slowly, and winced. "That feels a lot better," he said.

"You're not just saying that?" she asked him. "It really does feel better?"

He nodded, "Yes. It still hurts, but it feels way better."

"I think you have torn a ligament," she said. "I'm not sure."

Their talking and moving awoke the other two. Aries wiped drool from the side of his face and Medusa "ewww"d at the wetness on her skin from him laying on her. 

She repeated her procedure on Aries, the tingling in her hands become more pronounced as she continued, and the pain in her own body lessening. "You may have broken your ribs," she told the ram. 

He huffed in response.

She then turned her soft eyes to Medusa, and saw no smudges whatsoever. "You're not hurt?"

Medusa shook her head slowly. "Just cold."

"What do we do now, Mama?" Aries asked.

She looked around at the room, the flashlight was dim, and it cast shadows in all the corners. She looked at the rat lying near her, and then turned back to her children. "We need water," she said. "Clean water."

"Where are we going to find clean water down here?" Aries snapped.

"How should I know!" she snapped back.

There was a moment of eerie quiet, before Arcos broke it, saying, "We can find some water, and we can find something to carry it in." He shrugged, jostling Medusa. "You need to get off me."

"I'll be cold," she whined.

"Then do something to warm yourself up," Arcos shrugged hard, and Medusa's coils fell off of him.

She hissed, and Phoenix reached over and bopped her on the head. "You need to figure out how to stay warm," she said with an edge to her voice. "You're the only one of us that isn't hurt."

Medusa closed her mouth and took on a pouting face.

"New rules," Phoenix said in her 'mommy voice'. 

"Yeah," Aries voice dripped with rancor. "No picking up rat mutants when you've been nabbed twice by a man named The Rat King!"

Phoenix gave him a withering look, "No one goes anywhere alone. Ever."

"That's it?" Aries asked, his face looking recalcitrant. 

She was quiet a moment, as if thinking. "Yes, that's it." She looked back at the rat mutant, "Someone has to stay with him while we go get some clean water." She turned back to the kids. "Who is staying?" When no one answered, she said, "Aries, you stay. I think you've broken your ribs."

"He broke his ribs?" Medusa said, her body slowly waving up and down. "You fell of a building!"

"Nothing is broken or sprained," she explained again. "I'm just battered and bruised."

"Battered and bruised?" Arcos struggled to stand up, rolling his shoulders as he did. "You're all purple. You look like a grape." He turned to Aries, "Get up wool-for-brains. We're all going."

"She said for me to stay here and watch the rat," Aries whined, also getting to his feet.

"Mama's watching the rat," Arcos commanded.

"What if he wakes up? How is Medusa going to do anything without being able to move because she's cold?"

"Medusa isn't going to be here," his voice had an authoritative tone that Phoenix, nor his siblings, had ever heard before. "We're all going to get water. She," he gestured to his mother still on her knees on the floor, "is going to stay with the rat."

Medusa made a high grunt/hiss sound, picked up the flashlight, and began to slither slowly to the doors. Aries and Arcos followed. Looking back, the bear smiled at his mother. "You going to be OK?"

"I'll be fine," she said. Then, as he disappeared through the doors she called, "Arcos!" He poked his head back in, his eyebrows raised. "Thank you, Teddy Bear," she said. "I really don't want to go walking..."

He shook his head, "We'll take care of getting stuff," he said. "You take care of getting everyone better."

Once he was gone, she was plunged in darkness so thick, she couldn't see her hand in front of her face. She turned toward where the rat was lying She crawled over to him, her own hurts returning with each movement, until she was touching him with her knees. She held her hand out, hovering above him, trying to fight her throat tightening. "You lead me to rat," she accused the unbidden thought, her voice barely above a whisper. "Why did you lead me to a rat?"

The unbidden thought remained silent.

"What have done that you've done this to me?" her voice was still just an asperation. "All this time, I listened to you, and you brought me to a rat-man."

Softening her eyes, she looked at his glow that wasn't a glow, and grimaced. It, and her own glow, were the only things visible to her, like ghosts in the lightlessness. There were dark black lines where his slashes were, and enough black, shapeless spots on his body that he looked polka dotted. She blinked and the glow disappeared. She felt helpless. She didn't even know where to start. Normally, she would wash him first, but...but...

...everything was gone.

Her house was gone. Almost two decades of work, was gone in a heartbeat. She had started with nothing but the clothes on her back and five little creatures clinging to her. The desolate place that they had made their own, inch by inch, was gone. The place where they had laughed, cried, loved, and fought, was destroyed. 

Her medicines were gone. Years of gathering, of learning what plant did what, of learning how to prepare them, of learning how to administer them was gone.

Her juniper bush was gone. Almost two decades of growth was gone...she didn't see how. Perhaps it was burned, perhaps it was crushed, like the body underneath had surely been crushed by the weight of the heavy, lush bush above it.

Her catnip patch was gone. It had begun to grow lush and green, the smell attracting cats and rats from all around. It waved in the wind, like her daughter's tail once had. Now, it, too, was gone, burned or crushed.

At this last thought, she put her hands to her face and let out a loud sob. Her body shook, and her face was suddenly soaked with tears. 

Everything was gone.

They had to start over from scratch. With nothing but the clothes on her back, once again, only this time in a dark, dank, stinking sewer room. What the hell was a sewer doing with rooms anyway? The light of the flashlight was obviously fading, and what would happen when the batteries ran out? They would be stuck in darkness, with no hope of anything.

Safe, said the unbidden thought.

I do not feel safe, she replied. I feel helpless.

You are safe, it said. You are safe.

She sniffed, and tried to stop her tears, reaching down to put her hands on the rat. His robe was crunchy with filth, and she could feel the crunch of his dried fur underneath. She closed her eyes and noticed no difference between that and the utter darkness she experienced when her eyes were open. Then, the tingly ants began to travel from her finger tips, and she had no idea where to tell them where to go. She simply hoped they knew where to go on their own.

***

"Mama." 

Phoenix heard Arcos' voice from faraway, bringing her up out of her sleep. She was lying on something hard, very hard, and silky. And hot. Very hot. She raised her head, and was still engulfed in darkness. A light began to creep in, until it became a bright beacon, with three shadows behind it. She turned to where she had been lying, and saw that she'd been on the rat's arm. She reached out to touch him. "He's burning up," she muttered, her throat hurting as she did.

Turning back to her children, she saw they held grocery bags, filled with water. Medusa held a big, blue plastic barrel in her coils and in her arms she held a large lamp with a crank on the side. 

"We have water," Aries said, his hands laden with grocery bags. 

Phoenix tried to talk, but nothing would come except a croak. Her tongue felt like it was about to crack in two. Medusa put the barrel down and reach in it. She took out a cup and brought it to her mother. Phoenix reach for it gratefully and drank. The water tasted bitter, but it wet her throat. After three more glasses, it also quenched her thirst.

"We got this from a water tank on a building," Arcos explained. "We had to wrack our brains how we were going to get it here."

He and Aries began dumping their grocery bags of water into the barrel. "I could only carry it half full," Medusa said.

Phoenix held the cup out, "Can I have another cup, please?"

Medusa obliged, and then Phoenix turned to the rat, and opened his mouth a little. "What you doing?" Medusa asked.

"Trying to get some water into him," Phoenix replied, dripping water from her fingers into his mouth.

"Why are helping him again?" Aries asked.

"Because he needs help," Phoenix said simply, trying to squelch the same question in her own brain. The rat didn't seem to be responding to droplets on his tongue, but he wasn't choking either. "I need to wash him."

"Why?!" Aries exclaimed.

She turned around, her eyes afire. "Because he's covered in shit!" she yelled.

All three children gasped.

After a moment of silence, Arcos said, "You can use the barrel, Mama." He voice was quiet, as if he were dealing with someone who might go off the handle at any moment. "We'll go get more water."

"We will?" Medusa whined. "It's freezing up there!"

Arcos simply looked at her and turned to go. "Leave the crank light here," he said. 

"The flashlight is almost out of juice," Aries said, turning it on again. It was very faint.

"Then we'll have to find batteries too, won't we?"

Both of his siblings sighed, and then followed him out.

Phoenix watched them go, her heart aching to what was happening to her family. Why had this happened to them? Had she really done any good when she'd tried to heal her boys? Why was she wasting precious water on a rat man?

She turned back to him and sighed, echoing her children. She was helping him because the dripping had lead her to him. Dripping she'd heard for years, kept close to her heart, not told a soul about. "How crazy does that sound?" she said to herself, "I was lead to him by the sound of dripping."

She looked him over, not sure where to start. She decided she would start at the wrappings on his arms and legs. Starting at his feet, she unwrapped them gently, putting his foot in her lap to give her room to get underneath his leg. Something clanked on the floor. She looked down, and saw a little piece of metal. It was sharp, and shiny. She picked it up, she'd never seen anything like it. It was obviously a weapon, but what in the world was doing in a leg wrap? As she continued to unwrap him, pieces of metal things kept falling out of the wrappings. The razors she'd seen the ninjas throw at them, the throwing stars, a series of straight metal pins, that might have been lock picks, they might have been some sort of lancing pin, she had no idea. Other things, which even her poet's words would have trouble describing kept clanging to the floor, until she had unwrapped his arms and legs completely. She put them all in a pile, and was shocked at how big the pile was.

She considered how she was going to get him out of the robe. She pushed him, and after several minutes, managed to roll him over on his back. He let out a hard breath, and Phoenix breathed in through her teeth. "I'm sorry," she said to him. She then undid the belt of his robe, and gingerly peeled it off of his front. It made a crunching sound as she did, and was stiff. It, too, was filled with little metal things in niches and pockets and loops. She thought she got them all. She grabbed the side of the robe, and planting her feet firmly on his side, hoping it didn't hurt him too much, she pulled on it until it came loose from under him. She fell backwards, and grunted as the pain she'd momentarily forgotten came rushing back. She heard something skid across the floor, it didn't sound like metal. She scanned the floor, and saw a shadow just at the edge of the light from the crank lantern. She crawled over to it. It was rectangular, and as she approached it, she saw it was a picture frame. She brought it back into the light where she could see it and her heart sank.

"Oh no," her voice dropped as she spoke.

Looking back at her, surrounded in a wooden frame, were four eye-masked turtles.


	50. Chapter 50

He was floating, or he was sinking, he couldn't tell which.  Then he was leaden, lying on a hard surface, wet and cold and in pain.  
  
Then there was darkness.  
  
He didn't know much darkness, or how long the darkness held him, only that it did.  
  
When the black finally parted, it showed a bright light, like the moon on a winter's night on the snow.  Out of the light came a woman with long, dark hair and a kind, sweet face.  She was tall and lithe, wearing a pale blue sundress.  
  
"Tang Shen," he tried to say, but nothing would come out of his mouth.  
  
"You have to eat," she said, smiling.  
  
Her voice was wrong.  The lilt was wrong.  The language was wrong.  She was speaking in English.  She smiled at him lovingly, and then she began to fade.  
  
He reached out a hand to her, a human hand, with five fingers, and then he saw it change.  It elongated, twisted, hurt.  Then there was the claw that had been constant companion for the last fifteen years.  
  
"Just two more swallows," said the same voice, only this time it was Leonardo who was speaking.  "And then I promise you're finished."  
  
He swallowed and then Leonardo faded away just as his beloved had done moments before, and all that was left was black.  
  
***  
  
He saw nothing, but smelled the strong odor of pine.   
  
"How can you be sure he won't hurt you?" said a grizzly voice.  
  
"Because he won't," replied the wrong Tang Shen voice as she materialized again.  
  
Of course he wouldn't hurt her.  Why would he hurt her?  
  
He held up his hand, a claw, and shook his head.  "No," he tried to say, but again, nothing would come out of his mouth.  "You cannot see me this way."  
  
Then she faded again, leaving a faint glow, before it, too, faded away.  
  
***  
  
He heard crying, wracking sobs, as if someone's soul was being dragged from the body.  
  
Michaelangelo appeared before him, his face in his hands, crying for all he was worth with a sob that wasn't his.  His heart ached, and wanted to reach out and take him in his arms.   As the crying continued, he became irritated.  "You should be training!" he wanted to yell.  His body was full of heat, as if he were on fire.  "You have no time to cry, you foolish boy!"  Again, no sound would come from his mouth, and Mikey just cried into his three fingered hand.  He wanted to grab him and hit him to knock the boy to his senses, but he couldn't move, the heat kept him where he was, trapped, until the crying stopped.  
  
***  
  
Raphael stared down at him, his usual scowl on his face.  "What makes you think any of the rest of us want to be down here?" he yelled.  His voice was high and lilted, not his, but it came from his mouth moving.  "Do you think the rest of us want to be stuck down here in the cold and wet, where it smells like feces?"  Why would he not want to be down here?  What had the boys done that he would complain about the smell?   "I can't get the damned smell out, no matter what I do!"     
  
***  
  
"Go get her," he heard a desperate voice say.  He didn't know whose voice it was, there was only the darkness.  
  
"She's coming," said another voice.  
  
Tang Shen...she was coming.  She couldn't see him like this.    
  
But then, Donatello was there, a cool hand was laid on his sensei's hot forehead, and then a wet cloth was laid there also.  "Ahhhhh," he said in a whisper.  "We'll get you cooled down."  
  
***  
  
Then, Tang Shen was holding his head in her lap, like she used to when they'd gone on picnics long ago.  Back then, she'd played with his hair, that gorgeous smile on her face.  Every time he saw her lips he wanted to kiss them, he wanted to stroke her neck, nibble her wrists.  Today, she was wearing a pale blue sundress, had he seen that dress before?  She was stroking his forehead gently and singing him a song that he didn't recognize.  "L'etait une petit poule grise, Qu'allai pondre dan l'eglise, Pondait un petit coco..."  Tang Shen's mouth moved with the song, but her voice wasn't right.  Was the song French?  He did not know Tang Shen could speak French...  
  
He closed his eyes, and fell asleep to his wife's singing.  
  
***  
  
Splinter was acutely aware he was not in his own room.  With his eyes closed, he could feel he was on a rough mat, plastic, covered in a cotton fabric.  He wasn't clothed, but covered with a similar cotton fabric.  The smell of soap and herbs filled his nostrils, and he could see light behind his closed eyelids.  He felt the movement of air, heard the putting down of small feet approaching him.  He heard someone next to his head put down a bowl, it was filled with a liquid.  Then something was being rung out, a cloth dipped in the bowl, and hand was headed toward his head.  
  
Before even opening his eyes, he shot his hand up and grabbed the wrist of the person who was daring to touch him.  He sat up at the same time, and felt he was holding a wrist, the size of a child's, that was holding a wet washcloth.  The hand belonged a woman who had gasped at his movement.  He looked into dark green eyes, speckled with a lighter green, in a pale face.  A middle aged woman looked back at him, her eyes wide in surprise, her pink lips partially open.  She had a circular burn scar on each of her temples.  Down to her hips, she had gold hair, that glittered slightly in the sunlight that was coming from the ceiling, with streaks of a paler blonde running through it and platinum about her hairline.  She wore a pale blue long sleeved cotton shirt, with a brown and black corset that looked as if it had been sewn together with bits and pieces of leather.  She was sitting with her legs underneath her, those being clad in a denim colored leggings.  She was human.  
  
She let out a slow breath, and the surprise faded from her face and was replaced by one of reassurance.  "You're alright," she said in a sweet voice, "You're safe.  No one is going to hurt you."  She was articulate, pronouncing each word clearly and calmly.  
  
"I am not afraid of you hurting me," he said, his lip curling.  
  
A look of horror appeared on her face, as if she hadn't expected him to be able to speak.  Perhaps she hadn't.  Her humanness seemed that much more apparent when the look of horror faded into a look of despair, her eyebrows drawing in.  She twisted slightly, to get away from his grip, but he held onto her.  She breathed, and had composed herself, as if the two looks he'd seen had never happened.  "Then there is no reason for you not to let go of my wrist," she said in a shaky voice.  
  
He let go of her.  "Where am I?" he demanded.  
  
"You're in the sewer," she said, her voice level once again.  "You've been hurt.  You've been fighting sepsis for weeks.  You still have a fever."  She held up the wet washcloth.    
  
Then he remembered what happened, remembered fighting The Shredder, remembered his children behind the bars of the grate, remembered falling, sinking in the water, remembered being lifted up and the heaviness of his body on the cold concrete.  He looked to his shoulder and saw it was bandaged, along with his torso.  
  
He looked about the room and saw that the sunlight was coming from a pipe in the ceiling.  The mat he was sitting on was near the wall, and across from him was a set of large rolling doors.  There was a curtain at the far corner on the parallel wall. All around the room were turned over flower pots.  The temperature was pleasant, not warm and not cool.  His kimono was on a hanger near the door,  and a basket lay underneath it with all of his things.  Next to his mat, right next to the wall, was a hexagonal piece of cloth, again sewn together out of little bits.  It had a crochet edging about it, and each corner had a metal washer tied to it, as if they were expensive beads on a lace doily.  On the cloth his wrappings were folded neatly, and propped was the photo of his sons that he'd grabbed before running out of the lair.  
  
"I'm called the Phoenix," the woman said quietly.  "What is your name?"  
  
"Splinter," he said regarding her.  
  
"You must be very thirsty, Splinter," she said in a motherly voice.  "I'm going over there to get you some water."  She pointed to a large, blue barrel in the corner.  
  
He nodded, and she returned with a cup.  Handing it to him, he noticed that his fur was...fluffy.  His claws had been cut, on both his fingers and his toes, and the smell of soap and herbs was coming from him.  He'd been groomed!  
  
"You can drink as much as you like," she assured him.  "We have plenty."  
  
He wasn't particularly thirsty until he began to drink.  Then, it was as if he'd not drank in weeks, and he downed cup after cup.  The Phoenix laughed at her fourth trip to the barrel, her smile bright and sunny when she returned.  "That will get you cooled down!"  Her voice was merry and satisfied.  
  
There was a noise outside the sliding doors, and one slid open slowly.  Splinter made to get up, but the pain in his side shot though his body, and the woman planted her hands firmly on his thighs.  "They aren't going to try to hurt you either," she said quickly.  "You're safe here, I promise!"  
  
As soon as they entered, he knew who they were.  He felt a stone in his stomach, the feeling that came to him when he had to get a fear, a battle fear, under control.  Grizzly came in, followed by Ramshead, and then Medusa.  "Oh, you woke up!" the snake said brightly, dragging her seemingly never-ending body into the room.  She quickly retreated the end of the room farthest from him, and curled into a coil.  That meant this woman was Disembodied Arm Mom.  
  
"These are my children," Disembodied Arm Mom.  No, her name was the Phoenix.  "And these are my sons, Arcos and Aries.  And my daughter Medusa."  She gestured to each in turn, her green eyes big.    
  
"We've been taking care of you," said Grizzly, no Arcos.  His voice was grizzled, as was his coat.  He was larger, larger than Splinter, and carried himself with a heavy gait.  He put down the large box he was carrying, and turned the Phoenix.  "We got all we could find, Mama."  
  
Mama....It had been so long since he'd heard someone call anyone 'mama'.  And a mutant was calling it to a human woman.  
  
"Thanks, Teddy Bear," she said, showering him with that same bright, sunshiny smile she had given him only a few moments earlier.  
  
Aries was carrying four buckets of water, he walked over to the blue barrel and dumped them in.  "We picked this up from the filter on the way in," he said.  "Figure we'd save you the trip."  
  
"You're a sweetheart," his mother said.  
  
"Time to practice, slackers," Arcos said, heading back toward the doors.  His brother dumped the last bucket in the barrel, and Medusa uncoiled herself with a flick of her tongue.  When they had left, Arcos looked back at his mother expectantly.  
  
 She made a gesture that he should go ahead with out her, and turned back to Splinter.  "It's time for me to change your bandages," she told him.  "Can I?"  
  
He looked over at his shoulder again, and then nodded.  
  
She was extraordinarily gentle.  She also smelled of herbs and soap.  He could hear her heartbeat, fluttering fast like a bird.  Much faster than it should have been, unless she'd been running.  She hadn't been running.  She was frightened of him.  The look of horror on the woman's face came back to him quickly, and he just as quickly let it pass out of his mind.  As she unwrapped the bandages, she said, "You were hurt very badly.  It took some work to patch you up."  
  
He saw that his shoulder and side were sutured, tiny little stitches running the length of each of his four gashes.    
  
"You're a tough customer," she continued.  He could hear, from beyond the doors, the sounds of weapons clashing together.  "You were pretty banged up."  She looked up at him and her face seem surprised for a moment.  The she smiled brightly at him again, accentuating the wrinkles around her eyes.  "I'm surprised you're not full of scars  under all that fur," her voice was playful.   He was thankful that his blush couldn't be seen at how she had the knowledge of what was under his fur.   "I don't know if I can keep these from scarring though," she chattered on.  "I will try."  She took a water bottle, it looked from the shape of it it was an evian bottle, filled with a pale amber liquid.  "I have to wash it, all this is is an herbal rinse."  Her voice sounded as if she were speaking to a frightened animal.  It was a stark contradiction to the rapid beating of her heart.  "It is water, lavender, and rosemary.  It might sting a bit."  When he didn't say anything, she took a clean cloth and used it to keep the water from running down his back as she poured it over his wounds.  It did sting, but not any more than any other application to a wound would have.  
  
When she bent to do the same with this side, she was uncomfortably close to his lap.  She'd positioned the sheet on him to protect his modesty, but he was very aware of his lack of clothing.  She poured it over the stitches, straightened up and smiled at him.  "All done," she announced, picking up the bandages again.  "Time to get mummified again."  
  
He made a small grunt of affirmation.  
  
She beamed at him, as if she'd accomplished something difficult.  "Are you cold?" she asked, when she'd wrapped him back up.    
  
"No," he shook his head, "I am not."  He let his breath out slowly, suddenly very tired.  
  
"You're sleepy," she stated it, she didn't ask it.  "Wait, before you fall asleep."  She went across the room and came back with a mug of steaming liquid with a spoon resting in it and a jar of honey.  "This is for the infection," she unscrewed the honey jar, and dipped the spoon in, bringing out a great blob of honey.  She plopped it in the liquid, and as she stirred she said,  "And this is for the fever."  She then offered him the mug.  
  
The liquid was pale yellow and smelled of flowers.  He drank it, it did not have an unpleasant taste on its own.  It was hard to get it all down, he wasn't used to such sweetness in anything anymore.  Once he had, he handed her back the mug, and laid back down on the mat.  She took the patched up sheet, and pulled it up to cover him to his neck.  "If you get cold, tell me," she said gently.  He wasn't sure if he answered her or not.  
  
***  
  
He awoke hot, his fur slick with sweat.  He breathed in heavily and opened his eyes.  The room was dark, with two candles lighting it.  On the opposite wall to him were the three mutants the woman had called her children.  Medusa had laid her body out in a swirly pattern, and Arcos and Aries were lying on her like a bed.  She doubled back around with the top part of her body, and rested her head on the bear's back.  All of them were breathing steadily, sleeping.  Next to him, barely more than one of her own arm lengths way, lay the Phoenix.  She was on a pad similar to his own, only smaller to match her body size.  She was covered with a sheet akin to his own, patched from different pieces of fabric.  His breathing must have woken her up, he presumed, for she opened her eyes and looked at him.  
  
As soon as she saw he was awake, she was up, and leaning over to him.  She placed the back of her hand on his forehead, and when it touched him he felt a jolt of recognition and electricity zap through him.  It must have shown on his face.  She snatched her hand away, and asked quietly, "Did I hurt you?"  
  
"No," he said.  "You did not."  
  
She looked at him closely, as if trying to decide if he was lying or not.  She then reached behind her, and brought a plate and another mug to him.  "Eat a little," she said, motioning to the crackers on the plate.  "And drink some more yarrow tea."  
  
He did as he was told.  The crackers were very stale, almost like styrofoam, and the tea was cold and too sweet with honey.  By the time he was finished, he felt his stomach was more full that it had been in years.  He laid back down on his unhurt side, facing her.  She did the same, and looked at him, not at all seeming ashamed that she examined him.  Her eyes moved over his face, her own face having nothing but a curious expression on it.  When her gaze got to his eyes, she smiled at him gently.  
  
"Are you a doctor?" Splinter asked, his own voice quiet.  
  
Her smiled widened, but her eyes turned sad.  "The closest that any of us will get to one," she answered.


	51. Chapter 51

Arcos, Aries, and Medusa had carried hundreds pounds of items underground when they were out reconstructing their lives. The immediate need, after water, was food, they decided, and then medicine. They needed a lot of water. They had to clean the rooms they were living in, they had to clean themselves, they had to clean their clothes, and they had to clean everything that they brought down to their new living space. The only base that their mother had for her medicines was water, so they needed it for washes and teas. They had brought down empty barrels to hold the water. They had brought plastic grocery bags filled with water, not an easy carry, to fill the barrels. They'd finally found buckets, and something so simple as a plastic bucket seemed to be the greatest invention ever. They could now carry 5 gallons of water at time in each bucket, and they didn't have to work to keep them balanced liked they did the grocery bags. It seemed that for days and days their lives were filled with the search for water.

After the water was taken care of, food became their main priority. Arcos was hungry. He constantly had a gnawing in his stomach. Searching for water had left space in his belly for food, which was in short supply. He was in no mood to rely on the luck of what they could find in others' garbage in order to eat.

With their mother not present at one of their outings, Arcos walked up to an apartment building and tore the front door off the hinges.

"What are you doing?" Aries had asked, putting down the lid of the garbage can he was about to rummage in.

"Going in the building," Arcos' voice had been impassive.

"You're going in the building?" Medusa had slunk over to him. "You're going to get stuff out of people's apartments?"

He looked at his sister stoically. "Yes," he had answered.

"You can't steal stuff out of people's apartments," she'd said. 

"Why not?" Aries had walked over to them, "the people aren't going to need it. They're not even people any more."

Medusa had looked from one to the other of her brothers. "Mama isn't going to like this..." she had felt her resistance faltering.

"Then we don't tell her." Both Aries and Medusa looked at him uncomfortably at his matter-of-fact speaking. 

The three had gone into the building and cleared out every fridge and pantry in the place.

They had continued to raid apartment buildings until they came across one which was still occupied. They had not been able to quell the screams of the residents inside, and had run to nearest manhole cover they could reach. After that, they stuck to dumpsters.

They avoided going out during the day, even if they were gone for more than a day. The Kraang seemed to congregate in of the city, which they tried to avoid once they discovered where they were. Their first encounter with them had scared the living daylights out of him.

They were walking along the road, not being particularly careful. It was their own fault. It was quiet, with no humans about, they'd let down their guard. They'd had an impressive shopping trip so far, their bags heavy. They turned a corner, and in front of them were a group of Kraangdroids. Without a word, they'd all retreated around the corner, and listened intently. Arcos had put his hand up to retrieve his hammer, his ears stretched to their limit. Nothing happened, and they returned the way they came, this time in the shadows.

His neck ached whenever they came back home, and his mother had placed a cool washcloth with dandelion root tea. "It isn't the most effective herb," she'd said, "but it is better than nothing." He could feel the tingly warmth of her magic as she laid hands on him. His neck was better in a little more than two weeks, and he was glad that during that time he'd not had to wield his sledgehammer.

Arcos had found a drawing pad and some pencils. He had busied himself with sketching things from memory, but that got him depressed to the point he wanted to cry. It had been a long, long time since he'd cried due an emotional hurt. He had to blink rapidly, and increase his breathing to get a hold of himself. He would feel his chest tighten, and then throat, and panic would rise from belly and squeeze through the tightness. He knew that if it got to his head, if it got passed his throat, that it would consume him, and he was afraid of what he would do. Like he did to Kraang with his sledgehammer, he squashed the feeling down to the bottom of his stomach, where he would tell it to stay. And it would stay there for a while. He began to stick with fantasy settings, drawing fairies, elves, dragons, and unicorns. He drew Aries, and Medusa. He drew his mother, and he drew the rat mutant. He missed his paints, and pastels at home. He missed his bed. He missed the smell of the warehouse, the smoky air in the winter, and the open windows in the summer. He missed the kitchen table, with its peeling chrome legs. He missed his mother's bed, which they all shared together in the winter to keep warm. He missed playing with his brother and sister and their friends. He missed what it was before...

He would sometimes be overcome with an anger that frightened him. He was angry at the Kraang for taking away him home. He was angry at Medusa for whining all the time. He was angry at Aries for being unreasonable too much of the time. He was angry at his mother, that she didn't help them more topside, that she kept down here with her 'patient'. He was angry at the rat mutant for taking his mother away, at a time when he desperately wanted her. If they'd not found him, then it would be just them, as it should be. Even if it was in the sewer, they'd be able to go topside together, the four of them, and not in pairs and in threes. 

His mother's vehement insistence that the rat be brought to their new home bothered him. He wasn't sure why. He couldn't put a finger on it. Aries had told him flat out, they should have put the rat back in the sewer from where he'd obviously come. "She's wasting all of her time on a sewer rat," he'd said. He had to agree, but he didn't say it, he had only grunted noncommittally in reply. Arcos did feel that there was something more to it than his mother simply wasting their time on a sewer rat. There was something she wasn't telling them. That is what didn't set well with him. Secrets, she was keeping secrets. He hadn't known her keep secrets before, simply to not mention certain things. But then, how could he judge her for keeping secrets, when now, they were keeping secrets from her? If he thought about it too much, he was reminded of many of the things in his life which he simply hadn't mentioned, because he knew that she would disapprove. 

"She isn't keeping secrets," Medusa had clicked her tongue at him when he'd mentioned it. "She's keeping her own counsel."

He wasn't sure he saw the difference anymore. 

He had suspected for sometime that something..untoward...had happened when she'd been kidnapped by the Rat King. She hadn't told them anything about the experience, other than if something like it ever happened again, they were not come after her. She had lived her life, they were not to endanger theirs by fetching her, she'd said. Arcos had no idea how to ask what happened while she was his prisoner, much less how to ask if a violation had happened. "Excuse me, Mama," he would deride himself for thinking what he would say, "Did that creepy Freddy Krueger guy rape you when you were down there with him?" Or perhaps he'd done something more sinister to her, that she felt this need to help this stranger when they were in a position where they could barely help themselves. This man obviously had something to do with the Rat King, a fool would be able to tell that. Wha,t he could not figure out. Sometimes he thought his mother knew, and then other times it looked as if she didn't.

Medusa had reminded him of his mother's words, spoken so often. "It is important to be kind."

This seemed to be much more that. And he didn't like it.

"Are you alright, Mama?" he would ask, knowing the answer was no, and knowing what her reply would be.

"I'm fine, Teddy Bear," her voice was reassuring, it was the mother who took care of her family, who made all of the decisions. 

Arcos had always been in charge when they'd gone out and fought. His mother deferred to him, rarely using her authority to overrule him in combat. But at home, he'd not had to command his siblings, he'd not had to make decisions based on what was best for everyone. She did that. That was her job, she was supposed to do that. And she did, when they were in their new home, or when she went topside with one of them to gather herbs. But more and more, Arcos and his siblings were going above ground without her, and staying away from their burrow for days at a time. She stayed down here, tending her patient, making medicines, washing clothes, sewing, and generally making the place more cozy. 

"What if he wakes up?" Arcos had asked on their second day, before leaving to go topside.

"What if he does?" his mother asked in return.

"How can you be sure he won't hurt you?"

"Because he won't," she'd answered. Her voice was so sure, it frightened him. It was one of the times when he thought that she must have had some sort of encounter with this man during her kidnapping, but she had claimed that she'd never seen him in her life. 

But with them being gone more and more, having to go farther afield to gather supplies, he was in charge. He had to make decisions on where to spend the day, what to carry and what to leave. He worried what he would come home to...

Then the first day he'd come back to his mother holding a picture of those turtles. "It fell out of his robe," she had said.

He'd growled. The rat was not only connected to the Rat King, but he was connected to those damned Turtles. So much so, he carried a photograph of them. The urge to grab the rat, as he lay there naked in front of his mother, was more overwhelming than any sensation he'd ever had in his life. This rat was part of the reason this was happening to them. The Turtles were with the Kraang, which mean this rat was with the Kraang, which meant the Rat King was with the Kraang. The Kraang were the reason they were homeless, living like fugitives underground. 

Aries came forward, his feet clacking, saying he was going to throw the rat back in the water where they'd gotten him. Arcos was about to move to help him. Let the rat drown, he'd thought, like all the Kraang should.  
But he hadn't got a chance to move.

His mother had thrown herself over the rat, like Pocahontas over John Smith.

So she tended him, and made them tend him when she was gone.


	52. Chapter 52

The first thing that Aries made when they'd gotten enough food and water to last them and cleaned their new living space, was a slow-drip sand filter.  The second was four large crochet hooks.  
  
He'd been bound tightly around his middle with whatever they could find for bandages.  His prognosis was changed from broken ribs, then to cracked ribs, then to bruised ribs, as his mother said, "Your healing is going famously!"  She bathed his side in dandelion tea each time he came home, and each morning and night.  Then she'd warm his ribs with her magic, and sometimes he thought he could almost see the warm with his eyes, surrounding her hands in a translucent white light, and making his ribs glow in answer.  
  
"Going up to gather water sucks," Medusa had complained. "Why don't we make a filter with sand?"   
  
"What?" Aries had asked.  
  
"A filter with sand," Medusa explained.  "I read it in a romance novel."  
  
"Tell me about it," Aries tilted his head to the side, as if it would help him to hear better.  
  
"It was about this Peace Corp worker," Medusa had begun to tell him, "and he goes to this village where they have water but it's all polluted--"  
  
"Not the story," he'd said, "the filter!"  
  
The novel had given an approximate description of it, made from different size sands and gravel.  It hadn't taken Aries long to figure out what may have gone where in the system, and to construct one.  The hardest thing to find was the very fine sand.  They finally did, taking it from the outside of an abandoned plant nursery.  Phoenix had seen them come in with the bags, and had physically turned around to turn a blind eye to her suspicions of how it was obtained.  
  
The first application of water used up all of the barrel they'd filled.  He hadn't anticipated on that, so they'd had to go up and refill the thing.  At least now they had a few buckets.  He was still made to carry the plastic grocery bags filled with water, a precarious situation at best.  Medusa had the barrel in her coils, and glared at her brother whenever he looked her way.  When they'd gotten home, the bucket underneath the filter was half full of water, and Phoenix was smiling proudly at them.  "The water tastes good!"  
  
It tasted much better than the fresh water straight out of the cisterns on buildings, and they all drank greedily, like it was a sugary drink.  
  
For the second application, he'd used rain water from a puddle in a playground.  He figured that was cleaner than the asphalt, but Arcos and Medusa had argued otherwise.  He had won the argument with, "We can see if it cleans this, because there is actual dirt in it."  
  
The filter did, indeed clean it.    
  
Their third experiment was the sewer water.   They were not the only people who had the idea of draining the water towers on buildings, and they were having to go farther and farther afield to gather it.  "Water, water everywhere," he'd said, "and not a drop to drink."  
  
The Phoenix had seemed impressed and he felt a rush of pride at her smile.  "Very good, Aries."  
  
So they'd filled the barrel with sewer water, using a screen to filter out any large chunks of stuff.  Aries did not want to dwell on what the chunks might have been.  It dripped the water, which looked clean, but still had a strange, though not nasty, odor.    
  
"What if we put it through again?" Medusa asked.  
  
So they did, and this time the water was odorless.  
  
"Whose going to test it?" Aries held up a cup from the bucket.  He looked from Arcos, to Medusa, to Phoenix.  
  
"I'll do it," his mother said, taking the cup from him.  She looked at for a long while.  
  
"You aren't going to be able to drink it with telepathy," Arcos chuckled.  
  
She gave him a playful glare, took a deep breath, and put the cup to her mouth.  "It tastes normal!"  
  
Aries dusted his hands together, looking smug.  "Water problem solved."  
  
Everywhere it stank.  It stank no matter where they went.  It stank up top too, but at least it wasn't a waste stink, and it wasn't as strong.  Topside, it was an acrid smell, or a burning smell, not this warm, strong smell that one could still smell with their nose closed and their mouth open.  
  
He had been gathering water one day, while his mother and Medusa had gone up to gather plants.  Every time he looked toward the rat he and Arcos were watching over, he felt a surge of rage.  When his mother and sister had come home, he'd taken it out on them.  
  
"I'm tired of staying down here!" he yelled, throwing the screen with the muck from the sewer on it.  It made a squishing noise and splattered in a star pattern around the screen.  "It stinks, I can't get away from the stink!  Even the water stinks!  I don't want to be down here anymore!"  
  
Medusa had reared up, her black eyes fiery, her face contorted in anger.  "What makes you think that any of the rest of us want to be down here?" she'd yelled.  "Do you think the rest of us want to be stuck down here in the cold and wet, where it smells like feces?"  Her body moved in that way it did when she was angry, tiny little ripples up and down her length making her scales stand up at the crest of each wave.  It was Medusa who had done most of the heavy cleaning, being the only one not hurt.  "I can't get the damned smell out, no matter what I do!"  
  
Aries had backed up, his nostrils flaring.  Medusa was more than formidable when she was angry, and she rarely was angry.  It was even more rare that her anger was directed at him.  He lowered his head slightly, and Medusa had hissed in reply.  
  
"Stop it!" Phoenix had come in-between them, holding a hand outstretched toward each of them.  "None of us want to be here, Aries," she said to her son calmly, though anger laced her voice.   
  
The ram had stood back up, a scowl on his face.  He turned from his mother and sister, and marched into the larger room, where he could have some semblance of being alone.  
  
The idea for his second project, to make a large crochet hook for his mother, came to him by finding a bunch of crochet magazines in a dumpster.  He wasn't sure what prompted him to leaf through one, but he did, and found a pattern for "a sleeping mat for the homeless" to celebrate Homeless Awareness Month.  
  
"Did you know November is Homeless Awareness Month?" he'd asked.  
  
"What?" his sister popped her head up from an adjoining dumpster.    
  
He held up the magazine with the pattern on it.  "It has a pattern in it for a sleeping mat."  
  
"You mean we don't have to sleep on the hard floor?" Arcos' eyes went wide.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"But we don't have any yarn," Medusa complained.  
  
"You'll never believe what it uses," he told him.  "Plarn!"  
  
So with every trip out, they brought back plastic grocery bags with which to make plarn.    
  
He always brought wood he found, or other bits and pieces he thought he could use.  He didn't know how long they were going to stay down in this place...perhaps they were going to stay down here forever.  He hoped not.  While they'd managed to clean the two rooms they were now living in, it still smelled.  The sewer itself was full useful bits and pieces, and he wondered how such large things got down there.  He would shrug at the thought, probably never to know the answer, and bring them home.  
  
Keeping his hands busy kept his mind quiet.  Despite his hurting side, he carved, and nailed, and built.  If he kept busy, then he didn't have to think.  He didn't have to think about how missed his tools at home, how he missed his intricately carved bed, a masterpiece that had taken him years to complete.  He missed their little gym at the far end of the top floor.  He missed Myra.  No, he told himself once in an honest moment.  He didn't really miss Myra.  He missed Myra's body.  She was very talented with it, and she could make him forget anything that bothered him, if only for a while.  He couldn't even daydream about her, because there was nowhere to be alone.  
  
When he wasn't keeping his hands busy, he was angry.  Quiet and working, or fighting down anger seemed to be his only two emotions.  The only other time he had felt like this was when he was a young teenager, his hormones kicking in and boiling in his blood, causing him to rage.  He wanted to bang his head against something.  He did once, on the concrete wall of the sewer, but it didn't make him feel better.  It only made him realize he wanted to hurt someone, he wanted to crush someone with his horns in a effort to make the anger subside.    He wanted to hurt his mother, for being so absent.  She didn't even sleep with them at night, like she normally did in the winter, but next to the rat.  He wanted to hurt Arcos for bringing them down here and for making him carry that rat back.  He wanted to hurt Medusa for being so needy and for being more powerful than he.  But most of all, he wanted to  hurt the rat.  He wanted to throw him back in the water.  He wanted to crush his throat with one of his large, wool-covered hands, watching his nose as the last of his breath came and then stopped.  He wanted to cleave him in two with his ax, and see him separated, intestines spilled out on the floor.  He wanted the rat to stand up, so he could ram him, and hear his ribs crunching underneath the weight of his head.  And he wanted his mother to watch.   It frightened him if he thought about it, so he tried not think about it too much.  
  
He carved a large crochet hook with a knife they'd found, and presented it and the magazine to his mother.    
  
She looked up at him a doubting look.  "You want me to crochet?" she asked.  
  
"We can all have sleeping mats!"  
  
"You want me to crochet?" she asked again, her mouth twisting.  
  
"Yes?" he drawled out.  
  
"You want to make me into an old lady, and learn how to crochet?"  
  
Medusa had laughed outright.  
  
"Old ladies aren't the only ones who crochet," Aries had insisted.  "Look in the magazine."  
  
"It doesn't matter," she held the magazine out him, "I don't know how to crochet."  
  
Aries already had his comeback.  "There are instructions in the back."  
  
So she had pondered over the instructions, and gotten highly frustrated that she was unable to do it, and made Aries learn it from the magazine.  He then taught her.  His siblings had laughed at him, so she'd made them learn also.  Soon, they were all crocheting away with plarn.  
  
The first night they'd slept on a mat, they all woke up sweaty and stinky on one side, and cold and clammy on the other.  "We need to put cloth on it," Aries said, "like we do with the shoes."  
  
Trips above then became clothing expeditions.  Any t-shirt they found, no matter the condition, came down with them.  It was laundered and then ironed to the plarn. They found five irons in two days, all of them working.  To get them operate, Aries had taken the plugs off, and wired them to crank lantern.  "Don't touch it," he'd instructed.  "It will shock you."  His mother didn't believe him, apparently, because she'd gone over to crank it up, and been zapped.  
  
Having the cloth on the plastic made it much more comfortable.  And the first person to get a comfortable mat was the unconscious rat.  "He doesn't know he's on the cold floor," Aries complained.  
  
"I know he's on the cold floor," she'd said.  "And being on the cold floor isn't good for healing."  
  
"Nothing is good for healing," he muttered.  "We're healing our enemy, **we** obviously need some head healing."  
  
"That's not funny, Aries," she said seriously.  
  
He was beginning to wonder at the serious of it with her.  
  
When she'd shown them the picture of the turtles, he'd made his way over to pick the rat up and, literally, throw him a way.  She'd laid across him, looking back at her son, and cried, "No!"  
  
"What is the matter with you?" Aries had yelled.  He wanted to grab here and shake her until her brains fell out.  His felt his face contort, his lips draw backward in a deep scowl, and an unconscious, threatening huff escaped his chest.  
  
Her face twisted into something desperate and confused.  She shook her head, as if her thoughts would not compose themselves, and said, "You can't."  
  
He hadn't pursued it after that, and mentioned to Arcos and Medusa, the next time they were alone going to the surface, "I think Mama might have cracked."  
  
"Don't say that," Medusa hissed.    
  
So he hadn't said it again.


	53. Chapter 53

It was cold in the sewer.  It was colder in the warehouse, but it was still cold in the sewer.  Her family was getting less tolerant of her wrapping around them for warmth, and for the first time in a long time, she was grateful when her brothers wanted to use her for a heading pad.  They had made a giant square sleeping mat, which she positioned herself on, and then the boys would position themselves on her.  If her mother slept with them, which she only did whenever they napped during the day, she would be near Medusa's chest, and it was extra warm.  
  
Her mind was foggy, and slow to move, much like her body.  Once she got going, she was alright, but she hated getting going. She wanted to physically strike out at whoever was prodding her to move, but she was too cold to be able to do it. She had to get going, though, because of the four of them, she was the only one with her full physical faculties.  That meant she had to do chores that would have normally been divvied out between the three stronger mutants.  The first was scraping the muck off of the ceiling.  Neither Arcos nor Aries could have someone stand on top of them, which would have normally happened in a situation such as this.  They were both too short to reach the ceiling without some sort of boost.  That left Medusa to rear up, and scrape it with her thin arms.  
  
Her arms ached.  The muck seemed never ending.  The rest of her family scraped the walls and the floor and swept the dried flakes of sewage.  It wasn't as if the rest of them weren't working.  She was just doing more work than anyone else, simply because she was tallest.  
  
Aries had spat one day that he was tired of the smell.  That he was tired of being stuck down in the sewer, and she'd gotten so angry she'd hissed at him.  "What makes you think any of the rest of us want to be down here!?" she'd yelled.  How dare he say anything about the way it smelled in their home?  She had scraped, and scraped, and scraped away the filth.  She had done most of the work, scraping the ceiling, scraping the upper walls.  What did he do?  Scrape a few of the walls where their mother couldn't reach.  Sweep the bits that fell from the walls and ceiling.  Who did he think he was, thinking he was the only one who wanted to fresh air up top?    
  
But even that wasn't fresh anymore, it was always filled with the smell of destruction.    
  
Aries had said, shortly after they'd come here, "I think Mama might have cracked."  
  
She felt her blood boil, if it could have boiled in the winter.  "Don't say that," she'd hissed at him.    
  
What did that big dolt know about anything?  He certainly didn't know about anyone going nutters.  She was clearly aware of what a crazy Mama looked like, and it wasn't this.  This Mama was determined to survive in this new situation.  This Mama told them what to get when they were up top, this Mama came up top to gather plants and haul water, this Mama tended to that rat, and to her children's hurts.  Medusa remembered a crazy Mama all too well, and tried very much not to do.  
  
A crazy Mama simply shut down, as if she didn't exist anymore.  
  
Upon loosing Ailurosa, Medusa had lost not only her sister, her playmate, a confidant, but also a girlfriend.  That was something her brothers, who had each other, didn't understand.  Not only did she loose her girlfriend, she lost her only other girlfriend--her mother.  She remembered all too well, that all her mother had done after burying her sister was sleep.  And cry.  Those were the only two things she could remember her doing for almost a year.  While Arcos and Aries mourned with Crevan, and then moved on to whatever girl they'd been playing with at the time, she had watched her mother disappear more and more and more, until there was only a shell of a person with nothing in it.  The shell went out into the night, like a ghost, and came back well.  Well, but changed.  That was a crazy Mama.  Not what they saw now.  Aries was too stupid to see the difference between cracked and kind.  
  
Her mother was kind, "It matters to be kind," Medusa had told her brothers.  They had both balked at the refrain, heard so many times both in and out of clinic.  
  
"Kind to your enemies?" Aries had huffed.  
  
"Remember when she went to help those people just outside the Grey Cat's turf?" Medusa asked.  
  
"Yeah," Aries said.  "So?"  
  
"They considered us their enemies.  She went to help them anyway."  
  
"And they attacked her for it, remember that part?" her brother's nostrils flared.  
  
"But she said there was a boy who didn't attack us," Medusa explained.  "And she told us that maybe that boy would change his mind about hurting someone else in the future, because she'd helped him."  
  
Both boys were silent.  
  
Maybe, Medusa thought, for she could think of no other reason, that was what her mother was doing with this rat-man.  
  
It wasn't that she didn't have deep reservations about the rat-man they'd taken in.  Her mother seemed strangely attached to him, but had assured them all that she'd never seen him before in her life.   When she'd shown them the picture of the turtles, she'd reared, and shaken her head.  It took a huge amount of willpower not to hiss.  He was their enemy, there was no doubt about it.  He may have been unconscious, he may have been dying, but he was their enemy.  
  
Aries actually went to take the man, and their mother stopped him.  "You can't," she'd said, her voice sounded so pleading, that Medusa was sympathetic and repulsed at the same time.  This woman, who had saved lives with such surety was now pleading with her son to let her help a stranger.    
  
At first Medusa couldn't believe her ears.  Why would she care so much about this man?  She had even set the photograph of the Turtles by his head, where a bedside table would have been positioned if they'd had one.  Staring at the picture, thinking of the fights she'd had with Raph, the only one whose name they knew, it occurred to her that perhaps her mother didn't care so much for the man as an individual.  She remembered coming across Raph and Casey, in the ally, painting the wall.  While she had opened her mouth to swallow the turtle as a threat, she'd have had no compunction in actually doing so if no one stopped her.   But the Phoenix had been adamant about not eating him, even if her tone was playfully exasperated.  "Trap him in the dumpster," she'd said.  It would have been easier to eat him.  It would have been one less turtle to worry about, it would have been one less ninja to worry about.  It would have made their lives easier.  But there was a difference between killing someone in combat and murder.  
  
Medusa had not thought about that way before.  Killing was killing, and it was all murder, wasn't it?    She'd asked her mother about it the next day.  
  
Phoenix reached up behind her, her eyes still on the TV, and stroked Medusa's skin.  "What's the difference between murder and killing someone in combat?" she repeated her daughter's question.  "Well..." she turned off the TV, but her eyes still looked at the blank screen.  "I guess a lot of it has to do with the situation of the person you're killing."  
  
"What do you mean?"  Medusa had been at a total loss.  
  
"Things like, did the person attack you first?  Are they threat?  Things like that."  
  
"That's very vague, Mama," Medusa's voice had been dry.  
  
Phoenix sighed, and twisted her mouth in thought.  "Did the person attack you first?" she asked.  
  
"Yes," Medusa answered, not sure what person they were talking about.  
  
"Was the person a threat to you?"   
  
"Sometimes," Medusa said.  
  
Phoenix's shoulder's slumped.  "What do you mean sometimes?"  
  
"There have been people who weren't a threat to us, really," she said.  "They were no match for us."  
  
"Like who?" her mother asked.  
  
"Like those people at the edge of the Grey Cat's territory, remember them?"  
  
"Yes, I do."  
  
"We polished them off in a few moments, and you helped."  
  
Phoenix was quiet for a moment.  "What were they're intentions?"  
  
"To kill you."  
  
"What had I done to them for them to kill me?"  
  
Medusa was silent.  
  
"So they wanted to murder me, right?"  
  
"Yes..."  
  
"They attacked me first?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"If we had let them go, would they have come back and killed us the next chance they got?"  
  
It was Medusa's turn to be quiet.  "Yes," she said finally.  "But what last night?  Raph tried to kill us!"  
  
"He's also let us go," Phoenix turned around to look at her daughter.  
  
"No he didn't," Medusa shook her head, "Blue did."  
  
"But he followed Blue's orders," Phoenix pointed out.  
  
Medusa looked annoyed that her line of reasoning was being derailed.  
  
"Do you remember that girl we helped, in the ally where Arcos has painted that picture?"  
  
Medusa nodded.  
  
"What were those men going to do to that girl?"  
  
"Rape her..." Medusa drawled.  
  
"Do you think any of those Ninja Turtles, who are boys, would gang rape a girl?"  
  
"What makes you think they wouldn't?" Medusa pouted.  
  
"Because they let us go," Phoenix said gently.  
  
"What does that have to do with raping someone?"  
  
Phoenix took another deep breath.  "It shows they have a level of integrity," she tried to explain.  "Just like we have a level of integrity."  
  
"You're always going on about integrity, and how the Grey Cat's don't have it," Medusa's voice was bitter.  
  
"Remember when we fought that giant fennel with those turtles?" her mother prompted.  
  
"All of us smelled like licorice for a week," Medusa chuckled.  
  
Phoenix nodded.  "What would Razz have told you to do once that mutant was down on the ground and chopped up?"  
  
Medusa was silent for a long moment, looking into her mother's agate eyes.  "He would have said to attack the Turtles while they're guard was down."  
  
"Why didn't we?"   
  
"Because it wasn't the right thing to do."  
  
"Why didn't **they**?" her mother said each word distinctly.  
  
Medusa was hard pressed to say what she was thinking.  "Because it wasn't the right thing to do," she repeated.  
  
"That is integrity, Medusa," her mother had said.  "That is the difference between killing someone in combat, and murder."  
  
She had heard Chategris say, and Razz had often told her, that the Phoenix was too kind.  Medusa now understood what they were talking about.  And she understood that they were wrong.  They mistook compassion for weakness.  
  
She didn't want to be a Grey Cat.  She wanted to be a person of integrity.  
  
She watched her mother tend to the rat mutant in a way that Medusa would have said she would have tended to any unconscious patient.  It didn't look any different to her than with any of the Grey Cats, save he was always there.  Aries and Arcos didn't seem to think so, they said she was unduly preoccupied with him.  Medusa could see many things that disproved that to her.  As soon as they'd gathered enough cloth, they began to sew covers.  Medusa was irritable and she knew it.  She was snapped at by everyone on a regular basis, but she got the first cover that was made, even before the rat got one.  She had been promised a second one after everyone else was taken care of, and that had been made quickly.  Once they had enough of extra bits of cloth that couldn't be used, they'd stuff the two blankets and make a quilt.  
  
They began making plarn, and that was the first time any of them started to laugh again.  Her mother had been indignant at being forced to become an old grandma by learning to crochet.  As punishment for her misery, she'd made all of them learn.  Medusa didn't mind it at all, it helped her keep a little bit warmer under her blankets, and it was nice to work on something and watch it grow and grow.  After the mats, she'd made baskets for them to hold things in, using a pattern in the crochet magazine they had.  
  
She presented her mother with a plarn bag, "For your medical supplies."  
  
"Curly Que, I don't have any medical supplies," she said sadly.  
  
"You will," Medusa assured her.  "You just need containers to hold it all in.  Then you can fill your bag again."  
  
"It took years and years to get all of those containers," Phoenix replied.  
  
"That's because you didn't have us to help you do it."  
  
"You did help me," she assured her.  "You were always with me."  
  
"All we did was tag along."  
  
So Medusa had made several more bags, and when she found glass or plastic jars or bottles, she took them back home.  They were cleaned, sterilized the best they could, and the dried herbs, the lotions and potions, started to gather up again on the shelves on the outside room.  
  
Medusa found she didn't miss her things, none of her things really.  The books could all be replaced, the nick knacks meant very little to her.  She was surprised by that, she wouldn't have thought it if she'd been back at the warehouse with them.   Anything of any importance was on her person already.  She missed Razz.  She missed him like she missed him when they'd fought and not spoken to each other.  Only this was worse, because she didn't now where he was, or even if he was alive.  Phoenix had insisted that they were still alive, they'd have seen some sort of evidence if they'd been dead.  Medusa believed her, but maybe that was because she was so cold. She just wanted the spring to begin.  
  
Medusa was doing all the heavy lifting when they went out, for quite a while.  She resented it, she was cold, she was being forced to move, and now she was lifting things that she'd be irked to carry in the summer.  Her brothers were snappish and increasingly grumpy.  They both complained a great deal about their mother and her new charge.  They complained about her lack of attention to them.  She reminded them of Ailurosa's death.  They replied with shrugs, and "It's not the same thing."  
  
Hearing that made her angry.  Did they not pay attention to what was going on around them?  She could partially expect that kind of behavior from Aries.  He cared about how he felt, how he was treated, how things were for him.  He was selfish, her own voice was venomous in her head.  When he complained, she wanted to coil around him until he had no air left with which to speak.  Arcos, who she would have thought paid much better attention to detail than she, would repeat, "It isn't the same thing."  She wanted to bat him with her tail.   She especially wanted to hurt Arcos on several occasions, after he and Aries had healed, the big bear had insisted they start practicing in the large room adjacent to their living quarters.  
  
However, she felt a great sense of satisfaction when she returned home with the items, and got a beam from her mother, for "being such a good girl."  Once she was home, she was allowed, for the most part, to retreat to the mat made for her, cover herself up, and doze the cold away.


	54. Chapter 54

Phoenix sat, sewing together pieces of old clothing to make a curtain.  Once it was finished, they'd have a private place to wash.  
  
The small depression in the far end of the room turned out to be a drain.  It would make a perfect place for a shower...if they could get a shower in it.  They had no electricity, and no plumbing to fresh water.  Aries had assured her he could rig something up, if she could make a shower curtain.  Once the sewing was done, they'd iron plastic bags to the inside, and voila!  A shower curtain.  A plasticy smelling shower curtain, but a shower curtain, none-the-less.  
  
Washing the rat with no shower set up, much less a curtain, had been an hours long job.  When she'd started to rinse him off, the caked on filth from the floor became sludge.  She'd sworn in English for the second time that day, a word that her children had probably not heard her say in any language.  In fact, she wasn't sure if they'd ever heard her say 'shit' in English.  She'd shaken her head, and begun to push the sludge away with her hands, but all it did was spread it.    
  
She'd taken the crank lamp, and searched the room for something to scrape with.  Finding nothing, she'd gone into the other room, her body hurting so badly it made her head spin.  She found a piece of scrap metal, she had no idea what it was from, but it had a straight edge on it.  Taking it back to the small room, she took buckets of water to the far corner, and began to scrape the sludge away to get it cleaner.  Having nothing to actually clean the rat mutant with, she'd rubbed his front down with water, and then dragged him to her clean spot.  "It isn't clean," she said to herself, "it is simply cleaner than it was before."   It took her a long time, she didn't know how long, she didn't have a watch.  Her arms were shaking by the time she got him there, so she had to wait a while before attempting to flip him over onto his stomach.  But she managed to, and rubbed him down with water, to get most of the large chunks of grime off of him.  
  
As soon as the children had found some soap, they'd begun cleaning in earnest.  They'd scraped and washed every inch of the inner room, even making Medusa do the ceiling.    
  
"I'm so cold," her daughter had complained.  "All stretched out like this is freezing."  
  
Phoenix had ignored it until the third time she said it.  "Chut, Medusa!" <Shush, Medusa!> she'd said with more harshness than she'd meant to.  "Shush and scrape the ceiling."  
  
Medusa had put on the pouty face she'd been wearing quite a bit lately, and scraped.  
  
While the children began cleaning the larger room, Phoenix went up to the surface for the first time since they'd come down, and was struck by the spooky quiet of the night.  She took Aries with her, he seemed to be the one who needed watching, and if someone was going to watch him, she felt it should be her.  He seemed to calm down some when they got the surface, to the point he held her hand for part of the journey.  With it being winter, there was precious little plant life to be found.  She did find some dandelions, which had begun to sprout with a warm spell, and some lavender and rosemary from people's front yards.  She was not sparse with her gathering, and felt rather guilty about taking so much of a plant that didn't belong to her.  It had been a long time since she'd had to do it, and telling herself that the owner wasn't going to use it only eased her mind a little.  
  
What she gathered the most of was pine needles.  She would come home with bags, and bags, and bags of pine needles.  She boiled them in water, and the entire two rooms were wiped down vigorously with the only antiseptic she could get a hold of in a pinch.  The whole place smelled of Christmas trees, which was a pleasant change from the stench of the sewer.  
  
Once the sludge was all gone, she went to work on scrubbing the rat.  It had taken her hours, again, to soap him up, rinse him off, soap him again, rinse him again, and then repeat it on the other side of his body.  She'd forgotten how much work it was to wash an entire body full of fur, but then, none of her children had been this large when she'd washed them.  
  
Once he was clean, she'd stitched up his wounds, an cursed herself for waiting so long to do it.  I should have done him before the room, she chided herself, but a clean rat on a dirty floor would have equaled a dirty rat.  It took a while to get a good enough hold on his infection that she wasn't sure he was going to die at any moment, then she was able to consider him.  He was like her boys, a combination of animal and human that looked like it made it possible for him to go on all fours.  His legs were bent like a rat's but the limberness in his limbs was amazing to her.  She'd never seen anything like it.  He could extend his leg completely straight, like a human, and she wondered what position it was when he stood on two legs.  In addition to the flexibility of his limbs, the man had muscles.  He had muscles to rival any mutant she'd ever seen.  When washing his body, she hadn't found a single soft spot on him.  She could even the muscles in his tail.  The combination of the rat and human in his body was fascinating.  And this was with him unconscious!  What must he be like when he was awake?  She had blushed and laughed when the thought occurred to her and then reminded herself that he was her patient.  She was allowed to think about her patients.  She wrote about him her notebook, teasing out poems that tried to dance just out of her reach.  He was pretty, she wrote.  No, pretty wasn't the right word.  It was too feminine.  He wasn't handsome, either.  He was...striking.  He was beautiful, she thought, all of him.  His fur was soft at his face muzzle, and got coarser following a black pattern down his torso surrounding a patch of white.  His leg and arms were coarser too, then going softer again near his hands and feet.  She especially like the white markings that curled on his cheeks.  
  
She had washed his clothes along with her own, when the children were gone on a long outing.  Kneeling naked at the bucket, which she'd dumped numerous times in an attempt to get his robe clean, she soaped up every last bit of it by hand, and then hung it up on a hanger to dry.  "I will have to get Aries to sew the tears in it," she'd said to herself.  She'd then washed her own clothes, and while she was cleaning her bra, it fell apart.  She held up the three pieces it had deteriorated into , and tried very hard not to cry.  Bras are not supposed to fall to pieces.  She threw it on the ground in anger, and finished washing her things, and then scrubbed herself down.  As soon as she'd gotten herself wet, she regretted it.  It was cold.  "I'm already wet," she had said to herself out loud, "might as well finish it up."  
  
While washing herself, she'd thought back to her children's reactions to her showing the picture that the rat had carried with him.  Aries had actually walked up to remove his body.  The moment his foot came toward her, the dripping sound, the music she'd listened to for years, filled her ears.  She could barely hear anything else over the dripping, which seemed to fill the room, fill her head, fill her entire body.  She had thrown herself over the rat mutant, and twisting her head back her large, hot-headed son and cried, "No!" in a voice she didn't know she was capable of making.  
  
"What is the matter with you?" he had demanded.  
  
She didn't know what was the matter with her.  She had waited so long to hear that watery music in real life, outside of her ears, sound waves traveling through the air.  She hadn't wanted it to take her to a rat, an obvious lackey of the Rat King, but it had.  She was compelled by something beyond her, like when the poetry overtook her in writing, and it was someone else doing the thinking for her, all she could do was watch.  She was overcome with desperation, with panic she hadn't felt since the great fiery bird that consumed her on the bridge all those years ago.  
  
 _Safe_ , the unbidden thought had said.  
  
I will keep him safe, she promised.  A vehemence filled her, a desperation, like a drowning swimmer reaching for air.  It wasn't his fault he had mutated by the Rat King.  It wasn't his fault that he was somehow caught up in all this craziness, but the water had sung to her for years, and it had sung her to him, lying helpless in the sewer.  
  
"You can't!" she said in that same voice that didn't seem to be hers.  
  
 _Safe_ , the unbidden thought repeated, and the desperation died, and she felt more like herself again.  
  
When the kids had gotten home, she was dressed in damp clothes, and highly annoyed about her bra.  All three of them had laughed.  
  
"You don't need a bra, Mama," Medusa had assured her.  
  
"Curly Que, after you've nursed a baby, it doesn't matter how small you are.  You need a bra."  
  
They'd brought back one, with great smiles on their faces.  Handing it to her, she held it up to her chest, her own smile wide.  "I thank you for the compliment, kids, but five of me wouldn't fill this bra."    
  
"We'll be sure to bring any training bras we find home, Mama," Aries had promised.  
  
Phoenix shook her head, and threw the DD bra at her son.  
  
He'd then come home with an armful of leather.  Old coats with holes, gloves, even a boot to a stick shift from a car.  "What's that for?" she'd asked.  
  
"To make you something even better than a bra," Aries told her.  
  
She had a twinge of uncomfortable guilt at her son thinking about her chest so much.  
  
Two days later, he'd presented her with a corset.  He'd made the cloth from cutting the good pieces of leather, and with tiny stitches, sewn them together.  He'd then fashioned the corset and used strips of the leather for the lacing.  "You'll never need another bra!"  
  
She looked at him dubiously.  
  
"Try it on, Mama," Medusa urged.  So she had her daughter tie it around her, and then put her hands up in presentation.  
  
"Mama, you look bad ass!" Aries said.  
  
She grinned widely, "I do?"  and then frowned.  "What your language."  
  
"You need boots," Arcos said.  "Then you will truly look bad ass."  
  
"Stop saying bad ass," she admonished.  "You weren't born in a barn."  
  
She had found herself some knee high boots, great clunkers that a goth girl had thrown out.  When Medusa and she came home from their medical expedition, both boys had whistled at her entrance.  "Now that completes the outfit," Aries told her.  
  
In the days later, she would look down at herself, not recognizing what she was wearing, a wave of tightness would take her, and she'd begin to cry.  She missed her home.  She missed everything about it.  She missed the kitchen where her children had learned to cook, to wash dishes, to wash their hands.  She missed the old TV and VCR tapes that the kids made her watch.  She missed her bed, made especially for her by her son, because he loved her, the bed where she and her four children had slept together for so long.  The bed where she had felt so alone when they all, slowly, moved to their own rooms.  She missed her uneven bars, and her little dance floor.  She missed her music, where she could dance until all of her thought left her, and there was only her and the music.  She even missed the little shower, with its cold water, that she'd managed to get working almost 20 years before.  Where she and her young children had all showered together, slowly in the summer with the cold water, and where they took quick wash downs in the winter.    
  
She missed her garden, where the graves of her children would now be forgotten and overtaken by the vegetation she'd tended for long.  
  
She would force herself to come out of her thoughts by checking on the rat, or dealing with the kids.    
  
Arcos was broody.  While it was the default reaction when he was upset and thinking about something, he didn't seem to snap out of it.  His eye ridges were always drawn together, and his mouth in a slight scowl.  He would look at her with resentment every once in a while, and she'd try to smile at him reassuringly.  He'd give her a small smile back, the resentment would fade from eyes, but then he'd back to scowling again.  
  
Medusa was very whiny.  Phoenix hadn't realized how much she'd let her get away with in the winter.  She kept wanting to snap, "Grow up, Medusa!" at least five time a day, but held her tongue.  It wasn't Medusa's fault that she'd gotten used to being wrapped around someone the entire season.  And it wasn't Medusa's fault she was cold.  Phoenix believed that she wasn't fibbing about being cold.  The rest of them were cold also, so she imagined that Medusa must have been very cold indeed.  
  
Aries was up and down in a most tiring way.  He'd be fine, presenting them with something he'd crafted to make their lives easier, like her corset, or the water filter.  He would be beaming, pride shining on him and his smile.  Then, seemingly without provocation, he'd be testy until he exploded, and she had to do something drastic to calm him down.  He had complained once, loudly and bitterly, "I'm sick of being stuck down here, like some sort of mole.  It stinks, it's cold, and the sound of dripping water is everywhere!"  
  
Medusa had gone off the deep end, yelling at him in a way she hadn't done since their early childhood.  "You think any of the rest of us want to be down here?!" she'd screeched.  She'd continued on, and when she was done, he'd stood stock still and silent, staring at her with wide eyes.  
  
They had developed a routine over the weeks, some things carried on from their old life, and some things new to this one.  Each took on house chores that they'd had in their warehouse.  Each of them took turns fetching water and filling the barrels.  Each of them sewed, and made plarn, and crocheted.  Each of them went up to the top in pairs, looking for whatever it was that night brought to them.  
  
Part of her routine was the regular checking on her patient.  He fought a fever constantly, and she fought to get fluids and food down him.  With so few herbs to work with, she felt at a loss, and each time she tended him, she sent her tingly little glowing ant-feelings into his wounds, and hoped for the best.    
  
She was quite sure now, after ruminating about him, that he was the general the Rat King had been speaking about.  He had to be.  Each and every one of those little metal things was sharp, which meant it was a weapon.  The man was in superb physical shape.  He'd taken a beating that would have killed one of the toughest Grey Cats.  But thinking about him left her with so many questions.  Had he been human and taught those mutant turtles how to fight?  They had the exact same kinds of weapons, he had to have done so.  Was he captured by the Rat King and changed?  That meant that the Rat King had perfected his formula and managed to change people.  Sometimes, when she thought about it, she'd have a pang of guilt that her blood might have been part of this man' s mutation.  But if the Rat King had perfected his serum, then why weren't there more rat people?  Had he only made enough for one?  Had this man gotten away shortly after being mutated?  Was that why he was so hurt?  How did turtles fit into a  self-imposed rat king, anyway?  Every answer to a question didn't seem to fit with what she already knew, like a puzzle where it looks like the pieces go together, but then are just a little bit off when placed down on the picture.  Soon, however, he became part of the background, brought only to the forefront when checked upon.  
  
One night, she'd awoken to him thrashing his head from side to side, his mouth opening and closing as if he were trying to say something.  She placed her hand on his arm, and felt his fever had risen, he was hotter than she'd felt the entire time she'd been tending to him.  She got him, put her hand on his forehead, and sent him the tingly light in a hope of it helping.  He calmed slightly, but his head would still shake, and his breath would come in gasps.  She kneeled by his head, to make herself more comfortable, and began to stroke his forehead, above his bushy eyebrows, where a black patch lay in front of his ears.  "Shhhhh," she crooned, "It's alright," her voice just a whisper.  The sound of her speaking seemed to calm him down, and she wracked her brain for something else to say.  A lullaby came to her, one that her grandmother in Quebec had sung to her grandchildren when they visited at Christmas, and one she had sung to her own little ones, both human and mutant.    
  
L'etait une petit poule grise <There was a little grey hen>  
Qu'allai pondre dan l'eglise<who went to lay in a church>  
Pondait un petit coco... <laying a little egg...>  
  
The next morning, he had woken up.  
  
She had been about to put a washcloth to his head, to try and quell his burning, when all of a sudden he was sitting up and had her wrist in an iron grip.  She hadn't seen him sit up.  It was like turning the page in a picture book, where  the painting showed him laying down with his eyes closed, and in the next painting, he'd been up and had her wrist.   She'd tried to reassure him that he was safe, that she would keep him safe, like she promised the unbidden thought she would.  There was a brief moment, the quickest of moments, when they had stared at each other, him in defiance, and her in assurance, when she thought, He has beautiful eyes under those heavy brows.  
  
He'd answered her, and her world came crashing down.  
  
 **That** voice came out of his mouth, and she could understand the words.  For years she'd wanted to understand anything that it said, other than the one word it had given her, "Dojo."  He spoke with the staccato she was so familiar with, with the lilt she'd memorized, the resonance that might as well have been part of her own mind by now.  That voice, that voice she'd searched her soul for, that she'd stretched out for, even more so than the dripping music, came from a rat!  The words made no difference, and for a brief moment, she'd not even heard them, she'd only heard the sound of his voice.  It came from the muzzle of a rat.  
  
"I am not afraid of you hurting me," he had said.  
  
No, no, no, no, no!!  Not from him!  It can't come from him!  It can't be!  I won't let it!  
  
But there was nothing she could do about it, she knew.  _Safe_ , the unbidden thought told her.  
  
I kept him safe, her voice pleading in her head.  I kept him safe, like you told me to!  Hopeless enveloped her, starting at her wrist where he held her and working its way throughout her entire body.  Don't let it be him.  Let him say something else, so that it isn't him!  She tried to twist away from him gently, but he held her fast.  Her wrist began to go numb with the force of his grip.  
  
 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought again.    
  
She wanted to scream.  I have kept him safe!  Why did you lead me to a rat?  
  
 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought, insistent, like the dripping water that was now music in her head.  
  
She blinked, concentrated on his actual words, that she had wanted to understand for so long,   "I am not afraid of you hurting me."   
  
"Then you have no reason for you not to let go of my wrist," she managed to say.  
  
He had let her go, and then demanded, "Where am I?"  
  
It was his voice.  He had that voice, that called to her for years, that she tried so hard to understand.  A deep, melodic mumble that haunted her, now it was in front of her, with clear words.  
  
Why have you done this to me? she asked, her internal voice filled with anguish.    
  
_Safe_ , said the unbidden thought again, this time with the rush of relief and a deep sense of assurance.  
  
I have kept him safe, she repeated, this time with a satisfaction at a job well done.  She held up the washcloth, "You're in the sewer," she told him.  "You still have a fever."    
  
She'd told him her name, and he'd told her his.  "Splinter."   
  
He didn't look like a Splinter to her.  She wasn't sure what he looked like, but it wasn't a Splinter.  His voice was something sharper, and his body something gentler.    
  
She'd given him water, and he'd drunk like a man in a desert.  She had thought she'd given him enough to drink, drizzled slowly down his throat with her fingertips.  He hadn't seemed dehydrated to her, but he was obviously much more thirsty than she'd expected him to be.  Each time he finished the cup, "More, please," he'd said, holding the cup out to her.  It wasn't so much a request, even with the please added, but a command he expected to be obeyed.  But his voice was lovely, with the words much more pleasant that his previous ones, that she couldn't help but smile at his downing of the water.  Each time she fetched him another cup, each time she heard him say, "More please," she felt more and more tickled.  
  
By the look on his face, she knew that he recognized her three children when they entered.  His turtles must have told him about their few encounters with each other, and she felt guilty all of a sudden about putting Raph in an upturned dumpster.  Then she remembered his attitude, and the guilt disappeared.  She had been worried, for a second, that Aries might have an adverse reaction to his awakening, but to her relief, he hadn't.  "You're a sweetheart," she'd sung to him.  And Arcos had had the sense to get them all out of the room.  He was gaining an awful lot of sense lately, and she'd felt a flush of pride.    
  
Then she'd turned back to her patient and asked if she could change his dressings.  She'd never asked anyone if she could change their dressings before, and it surprised her, in the back of her mind, that she had.  He seemed a formidable creature, this Splinter.  Now that he was awake, he seemed to fill the room with his presence, so there was barely enough room left for her.  She felt that she had to push to give herself space, and that when she did so, he pushed back.  She'd never felt anything like it before in her life.    
  
She'd chattered when she'd changed his bandages.  She knew she was chattering.  It was normal for her to tell her patients what she was doing, she secretly hoped that they were listening, and that one of them would want to learn more.  No one had ever stepped up to the podium, however.  But she heard her words, as if someone else was saying them.  The assurance grew in her chest, and the pleasure she'd felt in his drinking still remained.  "You're a tough customer," she said playfully.   He'd not said a word in reply, so she'd kept on talking.  She didn't know what else to do.  "All done!" she'd announced.  
  
He grunted.  
  
She had to work to keep from laughing out loud, right there in his face.  He grunted at her!  Like a cave man!  So this was the kind of man he was!  She knew she had a huge smile on her face, and she knew it was rude, but she was so amused by his reaction, she couldn't help it.  He had grunted and had fully expected her to understand what the grunt had meant!  She'd asked him if he was cold, and he'd finally said something else.  
  
"I am not," he'd told her, and a longing to hear his voice filled her.  She'd waited so long to hear it say words she could understand, she felt she need to build a vocabulary in her mind with the sound of the voice.  
  
 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.  
  
I will keep him safe, she repeated, as she had so many times before, her own inner voice heartening.  
  
She'd seen he was tired, as well he should be, she thought.  He wasn't ready for much more than lying still  in bed and eating and drinking.  She'd gotten him some medicine for his fever, and he'd fallen asleep on his mat.  
  
The children had come back in from their sparring session, and looked at him curiously.  "His name is Splinter," she said softly.  "And he says he is not cold."  
  
Medusa flicked her tongue and rolled her eyes.  "I'm glad someone isn't."  
  
"How did he seem?" Arcos sat down near her and asked.  
  
"He seemed..." she thought for a description.  "He was in control, to cover up being afraid."  
  
Arcos shook his head, "We don't need you to be alone with him anymore."  
  
Phoenix shook her head.  She had to be practical.  "No, none of us do, until we know more about him."  
  
"We know all we need to know about him, Mama," Aries said.  He pointed to the picture she'd so delicately placed on the homemade cloth.  "He's our enemy.  Whether he's with the Kraang or the Rat King, or both, he's still our enemy."  
  
She'd turned to look at Splinter.  His eyebrows drew up in his sleep.  "As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and lions," she began to quote the Illiad, her favorite poem,  "nor wolves and lambs.  They have spirits that can be brought to together, but forever these hold feelings of hate for each other, so there can be no love between you and me, nor shall there be oaths between us, but one or the other must fall before then to glut with his blood Ares the god who fights under the shield's guard."  
  
"What does Achillies and Hektor have to do with him," Aries threw a derisive hand in the rat's direction.  
  
"What if I had thought that when I found you?" she asked.    
  
Her son had scowled, and gone into the larger room to busy himself.  
  
She'd made more tea with crackers, and made sure to have a bowl of water, a glass of water, and washcloth near her bed.  She rolled it out next to him, her usual sleeping spot, and fallen asleep as the skylight they'd constructed began to darken, and leave their room in the dim glow of candlelight.  
  
He'd gasped, as if he'd been hurt, and it had woken her up immediately.  She could feel the heat coming off of him in waves, and reached her hand over to feel his forehead.  When she touched him, the room had tipped sideways, like it had that one day a while back on the sidewalk, only not quite so bad.  You need to do a better job eating, she chided herself, trying to remember if she'd eaten dinner or not.  Then he'd gotten a look of surprise on his face, and she'd snatched her hand away.  "Did I hurt you?" she demanded, her voice low.  
  
"No," he assured her.  "You did not."  
  
She assessed his words, and decided he was lying.  She must have hurt him for him to have that look on his face.  He hadn't looked surprised the other times she'd touched him.  If he was lying now, it meant he was capable of lying.  His face showed no sign of deceit, which meant he was a good liar.  It made her sad, that the beautiful voice she longed to hear could so easily speak untruths.  He'd lain back down after eating and drinking, facing her.  She looked at his face, examining it in the candlelight, and how it looked different now that he was awake, and his face had the potential for expression.  He didn't have an expression at the moment, he was like a blank slate, a sculpture waiting to carved..  
  
"Are you a doctor?" he asked.  His voice was quiet, not the force of earlier.  
  
"The closest that any of us will get to one," she told him.  No need to give him details.


	55. Chapter 55

Splinter sat on his mat, where he had been confined for several days, and watched Phoenix get his yukata off the hanger at the other side of the room.  He had been still been burning up with fever, even though he was awake, and was made to doze on and off through out the day.  He mostly meditated, not wanting to sleep.  If the Phoenix knew the difference, she said nothing to him.  
  
In the few days he'd been awake, he had decided he was not in any danger by being in the presence of his enemies.  His thoughts went to the stories his sons' had told him about their encounters, and again wondered if these mutants truly were their enemies.  Their actions with his sons, and with him, were highly incongruent.  They had fought his sons, and by their account, done so heartily.  Yet, here he was, unclothed in a room filled with obviously makeshift items.  The quality of the ones given to him were of the same quality as the one's the others had.  In fact, he had one of the few decorations in the room, a cloth that was patched together from different colors and textures of fabrics.  The washers kept it from curling upward at the corners.  On it, the photo he had taken from The Lair was propped, facing him, so that he could look on when he wished.  None of them had said anything about the photograph.  They had not asked him about where he had come from, how he had gotten injured, where he was going.  He was treated as if he was an honored guest.  The Phoenix checked on him with a kind regularity.  He was served first whenever a meal or refreshment was made.  The voices of all four of them were differential and polite when they spoke to him.  Highly incongruent, indeed.  
  
The first morning he was awake, he was hit with a panic that almost knocked him over.    
  
He had thought he had remembered Tang Shen well, keeping her so closely in his thoughts.  But this woman who was tending him brought back recollections that he had not thought of in 15 years.  A beauty routine being one of them.  It was something that any woman, in any culture would do.  Something that his Tang Shen did every morning, and every night.  Phoenix took a bowl of water heated on a stove made from terracotta pots and candles, and washed her face, then toned it with an herbal water, and then oiled it with an herbal oil.   The sight of it felt like a vice had gripped him between his chest and his back and tightened with every stroke on the woman's face, so that eventually he had to close his eyes, and block out the sound of her fingers on her skin.  
  
When he attempted to put his wraps back on, as they laid folded neatly on the octagonal cloth.  Phoenix had immediately put her hand out, and shook her head.  "Not yet," she'd said.  "The muscles in your hands and feet are still tight.  That will only make them tighter."  He was about to protest, when she gently took his arm and pulled it toward her.  Then, with a strength that was clearly hidden in her previously gentle manner, she began to massage his palm.  His hand was tight, and it hurt slightly where she pressed.  She was very thorough, she rubbed each of his four fingers, his palm, his wrist, and halfway up his forearm before beginning on his other hand.  The movement was oddly personal, as if she should not be doing it, that doing so was a breach of some sort.  The sensation of being touched for so long, and in such a way made him more uncomfortable the longer she did it.  She kept her eyes on her work the entire time, the look on her face was soft and gentle, and he was glad for that.  
  
She'd also denied him his yukata, saying, "You don't have any need to be getting up, you're still very sick."  She said it to him like he was a child who did not know his own mind, and it rankled him.  He could have her and the three mutants disposed of, have his clothes on, and be out the door before any of them could bat an eye.  But the woman was right.  He was ill.  He burned up, and then alternately froze, and eating and drinking too all of his energy.  
  
The three mutants were in the other room, he could hear them clanging and clacking and smack talking each other.  Their mother came over with his yukata, and held it up.  She turned her face to the side and closed her eyes, in an attempt to give him some modesty.  He shook his head, as if she hadn't already seen all of him already.  That thought made him feel no more secure than when she'd been massaging his hands.  He stood up, his muscles aching at the gesture, and slipped into his clothes.  The tears in it had been mended by an expert hand, tiny stitches closing the gaps.  As he tied the belt, he immediately felt better, as if a piece of him that had been missing had been retrieved.  
  
"All ready?" Phoenix asked, her eyes still averted and closed.    
  
"Yes, thank you," he replied.  
  
She opened her eyes and regarded him, taking a step back.  "Are you lightheaded?" she asked quietly.  
  
"No," he assured her.  
  
"You have to promise to tell me if you get lightheaded," she gave him a sidelong look.  "I cannot carry you back if you fall."  
  
He felt disarmed by her playful smile.  "I will tell you," he promised.  
  
"Alright," she conceded, and then moved her arm with a flourish that he should begin walking.  "We'll get you some exercise."  
  
She often spoke in first person plural.  He had not yet decided if it was a ploy to make him feel more at ease, or if it was truly how she communicated.  Her smile wavered from frightened to calm, from playful to reassuring.  In each manifestation, he perceived it was genuine, and each one was accompanied by an intense look that seemed to be trying to search through him for something.  
  
Slowly walking into the other room, he saw it was much larger than the one they were living in.  It was a kind of combination storage room and training space.  There were shelves made out of mismatched items, teeming with canned goods, empty jars, jars of rice, jars of oats, jars of what looked like crayons.  The mish-mosh of items made his chest taut, it reminded him too much of Donatello's workshop.  
  
The children were off to one side, doing what looked like a kind of easy warm up exercise.  The bear had a sledgehammer, the ram an axe, and the snake a whip.  The all stopped what they were doing when they came through the double doors, and looked at them quizzically.  "Splinter and I are going for a walk," Phoenix said matter-of-factly.  All three of them opened their mouths to say something, but she cut them off before they could.  "We will be in yelling distance."  
  
The three of them glared at her.  He knew he was witnessing some unseen argument that had not yet been resolved pass between the four of them.  Phoenix acted as if she didn't notice, but he heard her heart speed up as she walked next to him to the tunnel that lead out of the home.  
  
Holding a crank lantern, she walked beside him, his going agonizingly slow.   It shouldn't have been that hard to walk, but all of his muscles felt tight, as if he'd been squeezed into a tiny ball and had just been released from it upon his coming back into consciousness.  Phoenix seemed to intuit this, if she didn't consciously know, for her walk was also very slow, and she stayed by his side, neither going ahead of him, nor behind him, the entire time.  
  
"When are up to it," she said softly, as if trying to make it so her voice would not echo, "I can show you where I found you."    
  
"You found me by yourself?" he asked, intrigued by the change in pronoun.  
  
He could see her blush slightly in the low light that reflected back on them from the lantern, and she smiled as if she'd been caught in a secret.  "Sort of," she said.  There was a pregnant pause, where he waited for her to elaborate.  She finally broke it, but not with an explanation.  "You had me worried for quite a while there," she said, not for the first time.  "I wasn't sure you were going to make it."  She then turned to him, and looked him up and down.  "It wasn't easy getting you situated," she told him for the first time.  "You carry a lot of bits and pieces for someone just wearing a robe."  
  
"Yukata," he correct her.  
  
"Excuse me?" she looked at him in confusion.  
  
"It is called a yukata."  
  
She blushed again, and nodded her head.  "You carry a lot of bits and pieces for someone just wearing a yukata," she amended.  She said the word exactly the way he had said it.  
  
"I do not believe I have thanked you," he said, his own voice soft to match hers, "for...getting me situated."  
  
She smiled at him shyly, "Don't thank me yet," she said.  "You can thank me when you're all better."  
  
He had gotten the impression that she and her children were divided on his presence within their home.  The boys often looked in his direction, when they thought he wasn't looking, with a great contempt.  The boys did the same with their mother, but the look wasn't contempt, it was blatant jealousy.  The girl's look was usually a curiosity that mirrored, to a lesser extent, her mothers, or a confusion, as if she was trying to figure something out.  None of them gave him anything but deference to his face, however, even punctuating their addressing him with 'sir.'  
  
Their mother, on the other hand, looked at him with open curiosity when she thought he was looking, and with something else entirely when she thought he wasn't.  He couldn't place the look on her face, save that it was warm and not at all unpleasant to her.  She seemed vaguely familiar to him, though he couldn't place where he ever would have seen her from.  He decided, after his second day awake, that she must be reminding him of someone from long ago, but he couldn't for the life of him say who.  She was pretty, not that wasn't the right word.  She was cute, like a picture of a Victorian flower fairy.  She was little, with an honest face and a sweet voice.  She was quintessentially American, quick and careless in what she did, but so determined and independent that it corrected most of the mistakes she would have made.  He had always marveled at how much the Americans would be able to do if they simply slowed down and paid more attention to what they were doing.  She was slender, no she was skinny.  She could use a good 15 pounds to round her out.  The muscles under her shirt and her leggings were well defined and strong.  Her size belied her presence, however.  She took up a lot of 'space', that her personality was a large one did not take long for one to figure out.   She felt her emotions with a largess that seemed to overtake her.  There was little hidden in how she felt.  Her eyes, the color of agate, were round and honest, to the point he was quite sure she was very poor liar, if she tried to lie.  He noticed, that instead of stating what he thought was a untruth, she simply changed the subject, or gave a half answer.  Lying through omission.  Despite that, she was a bright, sunny little thing, a rival to the sunshine coming into the skylights that her son had devised.  The thought, which he had come to just after one of his fake sleeping meditations, gave him some compassion for the envious looks her sons threw his way.  
  
She was looking at him now, with that open curiosity, her eyes going to his feet and then back up to his face.  "You don't make any sound when you walk," she noticed.  "My steps echo," she banged her booted foot to the ground for emphasis.  
  
"Hmmm," he said in reply.  She smiled broadly, showing all of her teeth, and turned her face away from him.  
  
Her smile had lessened when she turned back to him, and she stopped.  "Let's head back to The Burrow," she turned around.  "I don't want to wear you out too much."  
  
He didn't want to turn around and go back, he wanted to keep going.  He wanted to look for his sons.  Had they escaped?  Had they returned to the Lair?  Had the Kraang gotten a hold of them?  Had The Shredder?  A surge of irritation filled him at his weakness, and then at this tiny woman who prevented him, of his own accord, from leaving.  "The Burrow?" he asked.  
  
Phoenix giggled, "That's what the kids have been calling it.  We are burrowed underground like moles."  After a moment's pause, she giggled again.  "A fine set of moles we are!"  
  
When they returned to The Burrow, the three children were cooking dinner.  Phoenix lead him back to his mat, and fetched him a tall glass of water.  "Drink up," she instructed.  "You get a real dinner tonight!"  She walked toward the rolling doors, and reached out to stroke Aries as she passed him.  "I'll just be in the other room," she said quietly.  
  
The ram had nodded in reply.  
  
After a few moments, Medusa had slithered over to the door and poked her head out.    
  
"What is she doing?" Aries asked.  
  
"Moon salutations," Medusa said, coming back in.  
  
"What's she doing moon salutations for?" Aries' voice was highly annoyed.  "There isn't any moon to salute!"  
  
"She's not doing it to salute the moon, wool-for-brains," Medusa said.  "She's doing it so she doesn't beat you in the head with a stick."  
  
"I'll beat you in the head with a stick," Aries said in a huff.  
  
"Stop it, you two,"  Arcos' gruff voice broke through.  "Or we'll all get beat in the head with a stick."  He glanced over at Splinter, an uncertain look on his face, and then back to his siblings.  "Let her do her thing," he said quietly.  
  
Medusa clicked her tongue.  
  
"Go set the table," he said.  
  
"Go set the table," Medusa muttered in a high, unflattering voice as she slithered away to the far end of the room.  She brought out a blanket, patched together fabric like every other blanket in the room.  This one was square, and much larger than any of the others.  She laid it down in the middle of the floor, and Aries came over with plates and flatware, and began setting the blanket as if it were a tablecloth.    
  
"Is she gonna do 12 of them?" Aries threw a look at the double doors.  "It'll be an hour before we eat!"  
  
Whether she heard his complaint, or Lady Fortune was simply smiling upon him, his mother emerged, and inhaled deeply.  "Oh, it smells good!"  
  
"It's rice and eggs," Arcos said.  
  
"Again," Aries sneered.  
  
"Mmmm, rice and eggs."  She came over to Splinter, and put her hand out to help him up.  "Time for dinner," she said, as if she was divulging a secret.  He took her hand, but didn't use it to bring himself up, simply holding it as gesture of good will.  Her eyes became confused for just a moment as he stood up, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come.  
  
The table was set with the food in the middle and each of the children on a side of the square, with two places set at the fourth side.  Phoenix sat down next to Splinter, and reached for the platter of eggs and rice.  She gave him a large plop of them, herself a very small plop of them, and then passed both platters to the left.   Each of the kids piled their plates so that the platter was empty by the time it reached Splinter again.  She smiled up at him and tilted her head, "Eat up," she said, gesturing to his plate.  
  
Again he felt the vice on his chest, threatening to keep him from breathing.  A vision of his wife, her silky, straight black hair loose about her face, serving him, came clearly to his mind's eye.  He closed his eyes, and lowered his head in an attempt to make the shade of his past fade.  When he had, he opened them again, to see Phoenix still regarding him.  He took a bite of his food, and it was only then that she took a bite of her own.  Despite the chips on all of the plates and serving ware, despite the mismatched flatware, despite the plastic cups that they drank only water from, it was obvious to him that this woman was well bred.  Tiny things, such as serving him first, not eating until he had, placing him next to her, showed a woman of great civility.  Another one of her incongruencies, he thought to himself.  As he chewed, he thought about it; was it any more of a discrepancy than he or his sons?  They, too, were capable of the violence that these four had shown.  And they, too, were capable of the same kindness and civility.  Well, Leonardo was capable of the same civility.  For some reason, it rankled him to realize the parallels between he and this woman.  
  
After eating, the cloth was cleared, Splinter escorted back to his mat, and was able to observe, as he had for the past several days, almost as if he wasn't there, the family at work.  The other four washing, drying, and putting the dishes away in a practiced and smooth way.  They worked like a well-oiled machine, without the bickering that his own sons would have done if at the same task.  Afterward, each child got a kiss from their mother, each one given gladly on the mouth, a quick and loud osculation.   
  
At bedtime, he was brought near to tears again, by the same thing as the morning.  A simple beauty routine.  He had forgotten how intricate it was, how much sound was involved, quiet sounds.  Phoenix took the bowl of warm water, this time behind the curtain at the far end of the room.  The _whuh-whuh-whuh_ of the soapy washcloth on her face and body, the _sssssl-ssssl_ of a cloth with the herbal smelling toner on her cheeks, the _ssssshhhhooooossshhhh_ of her hands stroking her body with oil, the smell of which filled the room, was so loud to his ears, he couldn't block it out.  After having to endure it for days now since his awakening, he wanted to wipe her from the face of the Earth, blink her out for daring to remind him that he had forgotten something so simple of his former life, as that of the sound of his wife touching her own skin.  
  
Like each night, she emerged from behind the curtain sans corset and leggings, in just her tunic length light blue shirt, showing lean, muscled legs.  Then she unrolled her mat next to his, and settled herself in, always asking him, "Do you need anything?"  
  
And he always answering, "No, thank you."  
  
Each night she would shine a smile on him, her dark jade eyes gleaming, and say, "Good night, Splinter," in a soft, excited way.  
  
He closed his eyes, as all but two of the candles were all put out, surrounded by the smell of soap and herbs, and he realized he could not remember what Tang Shen smelled like.


	56. Chapter 56

Phoenix found, very much to her surprise, that once Splinter had awoken, she missed touching him.  She hadn't realized how intimately she'd gotten to know his body during his coma-like fever.  She felt herself smile unwilling and blush when thought came to her.  She had never tended to someone for so long, and so exclusively, she told herself.  The fact that he was always there made it a matter of course to take care of him on a more or less constant basis.  Now that he was awake, she only touched him when actually dealing with his wounds, or holding her hand out to help him up.  Even when he took her hand, he put no pressure not it.  She was doing nothing to actually help up, she noted right away, but it was excuse to touch him. He remained a mystery.  Oh, she could divine some things about him from observation, but she had no doubt that he had done the same thing about her.  He was very calm, and maintained a control that she found amazing.  He seemed to have only a two facial expressions, if he was awake--stern and surprised.   When he was asleep, however, his expression would change, sometime peaceful, sometimes scared.  He never seemed pleased, however, no matter what state he was in. For some reason, she found that endearing.  It reminded her of Aries, when he was in one of his long term curmudgeonly moods.  It was almost a challenge, what was it what would tap that little crack to bring a bit of happiness, which was hiding in there somewhere, out.  Splinter must have a sunshine in there somewhere, too, although she was quite sure his crack was only a hairline fracture.  She was looking very diligently for it, and the search gave her a sense of indulgence, as if she was giving herself a treat. He didn't speak much, and when he did was short and too the point.  Her heart skipped a beat every time she heard him talk, in words that made sense, not a distant murmuring.  She wanted to pour books in his lap, make him read to them so she could hear his voice say more than ten words at a time. Because of his deadpan expression, that he seemed quite determined to maintain, she had trouble discerning when he was pain.  She had the sneaking impression that he had been in pain quite a bit, and had simply not said anything, despite her asking.  She did not want to push him to answer her, he did not take well to being pushed, the few times she'd tried to do so.  He was like a petulant child at those times, who was refusing to following his mother's instructions on getting better, and only giving in after much duress and coaxing.  Even her own children had not acted in such a way when they were in their worse moods, and she had to keep from laughing at him.  


For the children’s sake, she had tried very hard to maintain a routine, and even more so when Splinter had awoken.  The boys, especially, seemed to have problem with him.  They are only worried, she told herself, he is our enemy.  The thought would make an overwhelming sadness come over, threatening to engulf her.

 _Safe_ , the unbidden thought told her, each time.  A feeling of refuge always chased the sadness away.

I will keep him safe, she always promised.

Their routine was most structured in the mornings and in the evenings.  They started water for cooking, she did her Sun Salutations, the children did whatever it was that woke them up.  She got herself ready, they ate breakfast, they put away breakfast, they did whatever house chores it was that needed to be done, and then it was time for each to spend how they wished.  In the evenings, as the light faded from the skylight Aries had contrived, they made dinner, set the ‘table’, which was a large, square blanket, ate dinner, cleaned up from dinner, and then she read to them.  They were currently reading Waiting for Aphrodite: A Journey into the Time Before Bones by Sue Hubble.  It was a naturalist’s journal of ancient, some still existing, some not, invertebrates of various kinds.  While she read, they each did a quiet activity.  Aries tended to whittle, and Arcos drew.  Medusa lay still, her inner eyelid closed over her black eyes in a semblance of sleep.  Splinter meditated.

At least, she thought he meditated.  It was one of the few times when it was quiet in their new home, with little to no talking and the talking being quiet.  It was at these times that she missed having music the most.  If I had music, she told herself, I would dance every night until I collapsed.  She missed the floating feeling that dancing gave her, the lack of the peanut gallery in the background of her brain.

Her yoga practice, which she would even admit was paltry, saved her sanity.  It got her moving in a way that put a pressure on her muscles she couldn’t figure out how to get any other way.  She desperately missed her uneven bars.  That would have made her move.  The slowness of her yoga practice drove her crazy when she started it, but by the time she got to the 12th of her salutations, her mind was quiet.  Not silent, it almost never silent, but at least it was quiet.

If the children were going above ground that night, they would do so after she read to them, and the light was gone from the sky.  They went in twos, so each of them were in pairs, above or below.  After two days of Splinter being awake, Arcos had asked him, “What do you like to drink?  I’ll look for some when I go up shopping to night.”

She felt the same swelling of pride that she’d been feeling so much lately with him.

“Green tea, please,” Splinter had replied.

Sleep did not visit her as often as she would have liked.  She had strange dreams, not nightmares, per se, but she’d wake up and be unable to fall back to sleep.  She dreamt of Tacitus leading her though the sewers.  She dreamt of falling from a great height, and then landing on something and being catapulted into the air.  She dreamt of the Technodrome, and climbing forever up the side of it with Jayla on her back.  She dreamt of being strapped down, and a pink squid-like brain staring down at her.  But the most startling of all of her dreams was when she dreamt she was walking on a bridge, high above the water.  When she got to the apex of it, a great firebird came crashing down into her, with all the force of the flames it was made of, and knocked the breath out of her.  She would awake gasping for air, and covered in sweat.

Often times, when she awoke, she would turn to the side and watched Splinter next to her.  Occasionally, he would be having some sort of bad dream, or perhaps just a vivid one, and he would gently move, always without a word.  On these times, she allowed herself the clemency to touch him.  She would sit up and reach over to stroke the soft fur on his cheek, or run her finger over the edge of one of his ears.  Sometimes he would settle down at her touch, and sometimes he would wake up with a gasp.

“You were having a nightmare,” she would say, moving her hand from wherever it was to his forehead.

He would give that grunt that he gave as an affirmation that he heard, and she would have to use all of her willpower not to burst out laughing. 

This night, she had awoken from her phoenix dream and watched her patient for a while.  Her eyelids began to get heavy, so she closed them, and then heard a groan coming from beside her.  She snapped her eyes open, to see Splinter trying to turn over, his face twisted in a grimace.

“You **are** in pain!” she accused, her voice harsher than she meant for it to be.  “I knew you were in pain and not telling me.”  She reached over to stop him from moving, her lips pursed in annoyance.

He let out a frustrated sigh, and struggled to sit up.  When he turned to her, he glared.

“I don’t know where you got the idea that it was manly to not let someone know you are hurting,” she snapped quietly, “but it’s not.  You can’t heal when you’re in pain.”

“You heal when you sleep,” he said in a soft, angry voice that frightened her and exhilarated her at the same time.  “You cannot heal when you are pain.  You know all about healing,” he had not said the last as a compliment.

“More than you do, apparently,” she shot back.  “I’ve been doing it for over 18 years.” 

His anger seemed to dissipate at her words, “18 years?

He seemed surprised by the number.  “Yes,” she said, her own annoyance not subsiding.  “Ever since…” her voice trailed off, and she turned to look at her children sleeping on their mat.  “…since we started our lives together.”

He then turned to the picture that lay behind him, on the little cloth, and reached out to it.  Picking it up, he ran his thumb over the faces smiling at him from the sepia photograph.

The gentle gesture melted Phoenix’s heart, and her irritation left her.  “Don’t worry,” she said, bringing a cup of tea to him.  “They—“ she stopped herself.  She was going to say, “They are more than capable than taking care of themselves.”  But she wasn’t ready to drop the façade that they erected, that neither of them knew anything about the other.   “They seem like very capable young men,” she said.

He put the photo down, and took the mug of tea from her.  She placed one of her hands on his shoulder, and the other on his ribs, and he felt a heat coming from her palms that usually wasn’t there.  Then, he gasped.

It was a sensation he had felt often lately, with his increasing battles with The Shredder.  She was moving energy, shifting it from the essence of the Universe around them.  Only, instead of using it to enhance a movement, she was directing it into his wounds in an attempt to make the pain in his ribs go away.  She looked at him with a sympathetic look, obviously mistaking his gasp for pain and not the surprise it truly was. 

The pain in his body did dwindle, and as it did, he realized this woman was very powerful, very adept, and very, very poorly trained.   She was wide open, with no barriers erected to her inner self at all.  He felt waves of sensations in degrees of depth; compassion, annoyance, exhilaration, longing, loneliness, and underneath everything, buried below a plethora of other impressions, a gratefulness that brought tears to his eyes.  She was laid bare, like an offering to a god.  All he had to do was stretch out a tendril, hardly anything, and he could crack her like an egg, splatter her thoughts into oblivion, and leave her a drooling, quivering mass lying on the floor never to get up again.  He felt a flare of anger, and temptation to do just that, to show her what a fool she was.

Then the pain was gone, and she removed her hands, and his anger faded.  “Is that better?” she asked.

“Yes,” he whispered, “Thank you.”

Her face was very close to his, closer than it needed to be, as she always was.  “You have to tell me when you are hurting,” she said it this time with an indulgent voice.

He was quiet a moment, looking into her agate eyes, which were wide with worry.  “You have been a doctor to mutants for 18 years?” he asked the question that had been lingering in his mind before she’d touch him.

She smiled in a self-derisive way and shook her head.  “No,” she settled herself back down on her mat next to his.  “I started with people.  Then I worked my way up to mutants.”  She chuckled, at some memory he was not privy to, “I’m not as good with insects as I would like,” she admitted.  “They’re so far removed from mammals and reptiles.  And I’ve never helped a water creature, so I don’t know how I’d deal with a fish.”

He took a sip of his tea to gather his thoughts.  Every time he thought he had a handle on his situation, he was thrown a new variable by this woman.  “You have helped many mutants?”

She nodded.  “Mutants need a doctor too,” she said.  “And we don’t have an emergency room.”

Her inclusion of herself in the word mutants did not escape him.

 

 


	57. Chapter 57

Phoenix crossed her arms, and looked at Splinter hard, with a scowl.  "No," she said forcefully. "No?" he had to growl the word to keep from yelling it. She leaned forward, her eyes still staring into his.  "No," she said slowly. "You cannot tell me no," he ground his teeth as he spoke. She leaned forward even farther, so her nose was merely inches away from his.  "Yes I can," she punctuated each word.  "I am the doctor.  You," she widened her eyes to stress her words, "are not fit enough to do any kind of exercise.  You still have a fever." "My fever has been gone for over a day," he would have leaned forward himself if he'd had room.  "And we do not want it to come back," her widened eyes narrowed, but never left his. "It won't come back," he wanted to grab her by her shoulders and throw her out of his way. "It sounds to me like it is the fever talking now," she didn't move.  "Today, you can go for a walk.  Tomorrow, you can start to do something more vigorous." His eyes blazed at her, golden fire in amber orbs, and a green flame glared back at him. He saw the play she made, she was giving him an out, a way to save face in this standoff. "Hnnnn," he made the sound with his mouth tightly closed. Phoenix broke into a smile and chuckled. It was his turn to widen his eyes, he'd not expected that reaction at all.  Her smile got larger, her nose still only a few inches from his.  She leaned in quickly, touched her nose to his, and said brightly, "Time for your medicine!"  She then danced off, like a fairy going from flower to flower, to the kettle to brew the awful tea she'd been having him drink. The feel of her nose on his seemed to linger, despite it only lasting a moment, almost like the zap of static electric shock.  He shook his head, his anger having dissipated with the nose tap, and watched her work. She took by him surprise on a regular basis, something he was not at all used to.  It was as if she could wiggle in a movement, every once in a while, just before he was aware of it, and it was always accompanied by a smile and a gleeful look in her eyes. "Holy…" he heard Aries mutter as the three children left the room, "I feel like I can't breathe." "Me, too," Medusa hissed. "You both getting asthma?" Arcos joked, shoving Aries in the shoulder. Phoenix came back to him, tea in hand, honey in the other.  "I get the impression," she said, "that you like your tea neat." He didn't answer her. She sucked in her top lip, obviously trying to hold back a smile.  "Would you like the honey by itself, or in the tea?" "By itself, please." "Before, or after the tea?" "After, please." She let a giggle escape, and handed him the mug of tea.  He put both of his hands over it, and inhaled it, more out of habit than anything else, before beginning to sip it.  They had shared a mug, there being only four.  But a little more than a week after he came to, Aries and Arcos had gone topside to 'shop', as they called it.  The ram had come back with a huge smile on his face and a torn gift back in his hand.  "We got you something, Splinter," he said jovially, and held the bag out to him.  The rat had taken it, and brought out a delicate tea cup with an English rose hand painted on the front.  Aries had burst out laughing, and Arcos snarffled in what might have been a laugh.   Phoenix had clucked her tongue, and plucked the cup out of his hands.  "Boys!" she admonished, though she was grinning also.  "Why don’t you wash  **my**  new cup, and boil some water so Splinter can have some tea in his mug." The boys had done as they were told, both still chuckling at what they, obviously, thought was a grand joke. Phoenix looked at Splinter and had rolled her eyes good-naturedly. After finishing his tea, she held out the honey spoon, and then blushed.  "I guess you aren't an invalid, are you?"  She put the spoon back in the jar, and handed him the entire thing.  "Sorry." He nodded, accepting the apology, and dutifully downed a large spoonful of the sweet stuff. "If your fever doesn't come back," she said, harkening to their previous standoff, "then I won't make you take this anymore." They both seemed to be playing a game around the 'making' of one do something.  She could not make him do anything, and he was quite sure she was under no illusion that she could.  But she would make such statements, and he would allow them, or, perhaps encourage them, by complying without complaint.  It was an elephant in the room, something to flit around so as not to consider anything else more serious.  He was not the type to play games, especially games where it even remotely seemed as if he was the loser, but he couldn’t bring himself to disengage. The knowledge of her having the knowledge this was a game kept him participating in it. He actively avoided thinking of what separating himself from this farce they’d created would bring.

When she came back from putting the mug and honey way, she made herself comfortable next to him, and then bolted upright upon hearing the sound of an angry cry and a crash in the other room, followed by, “What the hell, Aries?”  She bolted up and toward the double door, and he followed after her to find Arcos against the wall, holding his side with a grimace of pain on his face.  Aries was standing next to his brother, looking at him in shock, and Medusa was rippling angrily.

“What is this?” Phoenix demanded.

“I didn’t mean to,” Aries bent to help Arcos up,

At the same time, Medusa hissed, “He rammed Arcos into the wall with his horns!”

“You what?!” Phoenix was over to her sons in a heartbeat, her eyes ablaze. 

“I didn’t meant to,” Aries said again, “I was aiming for Medusa.”

Phoenix went to the other side of Arcos, and together she and Aries bought him to his feet.  “That is supposed to be better?!”  Her voice did not contain her rage.

“I just moved out of the way reflexively, Mama,” Medusa said, following them into the living space.  “If I had known Arcos was behind me, I would have taken the impact.”

The excuse caused a frown to form on Phoenix’s face.  “Why are you ramming people?” she asked her son, her voice echoing off the walls with its volume.

Aries’ eyes went wide, his pupil’s shrinking to tiny, horizontal slits.  Nothing came out of his mouth.

Phoenix let out a slow breath, her teeth clamped together, as she and Aries put Arcos against the wall.  He slid down it, his hand still on his ribs.  “What happened Arcos?”  Phoenix asked, as if Aries was not present.

“I was standing up behind Medusa,” he wheezed, “and then I wasn’t.”

She turned her eyes to her other son, her scowl back on her face.  “Go get me the things to make a dandelion compress,” she snapped at him.

The ram immediately obeyed.

“Medusa,” her mother’s voice was exasperated.  “What happened?”

“Aries was angry that he lost the last sparring match,” she said, throwing her brother a wrathful glance.  “So he tried to ram me.  I moved out of the way, and he got Arcos, at full speed.”

Phoenix took in another slow breath through her teeth, and Splinter retreated a little out of the way.  At times like these, when the four of the family were engaged in absorbing activity that did not involve him, he was able to watch them, much as if he wasn’t even there.  Doing so was a double edged sword—while it allowed him to see how these individuals operated together in a way other than the description of the fighting that his sons had given him, it also reminded him of them to the point anguish.

As their mother dealt with Arcos’ ribs, Splinter was able to consider her as a parent, something he had never found himself doing to anyone else before.  Perhaps because he hadn’t had the opportunity in real life to do so.  He was surprised at how judgmental he was, but then he was having a lot of little surprising thoughts lately.  While he had regrets in raising his own sons, none of them were the faults this woman displayed.

Just as her overall personality was quintessentially American, so was her parenting.  She was overly involved in **everything** that the three children did, so much so that she rarely turned a blind eye to anything.  He wondered if any of the three of them could solve a problem on their own without their mother’s interference.   When one of them was hurt, she coddled them, like she was doing now, with “Oh”s and “Aw”s and “Where does it hurt?”s.   He would not have been surprised if she had said, “Let mommy kiss it better.”  The fact that her two boys acted as masculine as they did was a wonder to him, especially seeing scenes like this.   He could not have accused either of them acting at all effeminate, in fact when they did, they did so to insult each other.  Yet when they were being fussed at, or more accurately, Splinter thought, fussed over, they tended to roll over like submissive dogs.

“Go over there, Aries,” Phoenix told him, once he’d brought her the items she asked for.  The boy retreated to the mat where he and his siblings slept, and lay down on it, curling into a ball and facing the wall.  “Medusa, go do something useful,” she said to her daughter.

“I didn’t do anything!” the snake whined.

“I didn’t say you did anything,” she answered, obviously irritated.  “I said to go make yourself useful.”

Medusa huffed, sounding very much like a human teenage girl in a sitcom, and slithered away to the double doors.

Phoenix closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and then looked at the son she was tending.  “Is that better, Teddy Bear?” she asked.

A nickname? Splinter would have shaken his head had been alone.  What kind of mother called their grown son by a nickname like that, and still expected him to be a man?

Arcos nodded.  “I’ll be fine,” he said.  “It just took me by surprise, that’s all.”  He glared at his brother’s back across the room.   “Man, he has a hard head.”

“I said I didn’t mean to!” Aries turned around and sat up.

Phoenix put her hand up in his direction, not looking at him.  “I don’t want to hear it.”

Aries huffed and lay back down on the mat.

She went to the little kettle that was perpetually over a candle to keep it hot.  “Would you like some tea, Splinter?” she asked, the agitation in her voice only thinly laced.

It took him a moment to answer, so that she looked in his direction.  His own annoyance over her actions overcame him.  Knowing he should refuse, he said, “Yes, please.”

She didn’t seem put out by his acceptance of her request, and prepared him a mug of the green tea only he drank.  She carried it over to him, held it out to him gently, and then walked back to fix herself her teacup of mint.  She sat down next to the kettle, her eyes on Aries’ back, and drank the tea very slowly.

He knew what she was going to do next, he had seen her do it before, albeit it did not take her so long to get to the point of doing so.  She put down her cup, walked over to Aries, and began to rub his back.  “Lamb’s Ear,” she said in a whisper, obviously meant for Splinter to not hear.  “What’s the matter?”

You are calling him by a baby name, that is what is the matter, Splinter wanted to tell her, his impatience growing.

“I didn’t mean it,” Aries whispered back, not turning from the wall.

“You did mean it,” she lay on him, draped over the side of his large body, her face close to his.  “Or you wouldn’t have done it.”

“I was aiming for Medusa,” his voice was quiet, but no longer a whisper.

“How does that make it any better?” she asked.  The question was not laced with anger this time, but with a sincere curiosity.

“She makes me so angry,” Aries’ huffed, and turned over to face his mother.

She sat up at his movement, and looked up at him.  “That doesn’t mean you can ram her.”

“She thinks she’s better than everyone else,” Aries complained.

“How does she think she’s better than everyone else?”

Aries looked at the double doors where his sister had left.  They could hear water sloshing in the distance, she’d obviously made herself useful by filling up the water filters.  “Because she can do things the rest of us can’t.”

Phoenix smiled, and Splinter wanted to smack the smile off of her face.  This was why her children fought, this is why her grown son turned to the wall like a little child when chided, because of behavior like this on her part.  “You can do things the rest of us can’t,” she said gently.

He stared at her, scowling.

“You can design all the lovely things we have here,” she continued.

“Anyone could,” he said, “it isn’t hard.”

“None of us could have made that skylight,” she gestured to the pipe.  “That is amazing, and you designed that.  You couldn’t even fit in the pipe, and you designed it.”

“You and Medusa did it.”

“But we couldn’t have known how to do it without you.”

He didn’t answer.

“You can ram people with your hard head,” she said playfully.  “Medusa would break her neck if he tried to ram someone with her head.”

Aries chuckled.  “Yeah…” he drawled.

“I know you’re feeling cooped up here,” her voice was apologetic.  “Why don’t you and Medusa go topside and…” she shrugged, “I dunno.  Do something.”

He laughed again, and looked up at Arcos. 

“We can go cruising,” Arcos joked. 

Apparently that was the signal that the fight was completely over, because Aries smiled and replied, “In what, a tank?”


	58. Chapter 58

True to her word, Phoenix did not put up a fuss the next day when Splinter insisted on practice.  She knew he would have started much sooner, and suspected if she’d attempted to stop him this morning, there would be a confrontation between them.  She could feel his irritation growing exponentially with each moment, and she supposed he had to physically move to himself to get it out.

She hoped.

She kept the children in the living space, while giving him the privacy of their training area, as measly as it might be.

“Why does he get to work out alone?” Aries complained.

“Because he’s our guest.”

“He’s our enemy,” Aries said, a little too loudly for her liking.  “Did you forget that part?”

“Chut, Aries,” she scolded in a voice that firmly ended the conversation.

She had not forgotten that part, though she desperately wanted to.  Despite his taciturn nature, and his growing irritation, his presence soothed her.  Often the unbidden thought would come to her, and tell her, _Safe_.  With the word, a feeling of security would fill her, and it was a relief to her tired heart, and her weary mind.  I will keep him safe, she would reply, though she had no idea how she would do so, if it came to it.

With each of the children engaged in a silent activity, she poked her head through the doors, just barely, to catch a peek at him.  He moved in ways that reminded her of her yoga teacher so long ago, obviously practiced and meant to convey something to the practitioner.    He moved with a grace she hadn’t seen on anyone, ever.  Not on even the best gymnasts, the ones who she competed against and lost to miserably, the ones who had gotten onto the Olympic teams and won medals.  He moved with an elegance that was beguiling, as if there were no air, no friction, not even any thought, nothing to stop the movement of his limbs and body.  She didn’t know a person, any person, could move that way.  Good god, he’s gorgeous, she thought before she had any time to filter herself.  She whipped her head back through the door, felt her face burning and knew a bright pink must be accompanying it.   She went over to the kettle, and started to brew some dandelion root tea.  Splinter had not moved for two months, she knew his muscles would be sore after what he was doing now.  He might not admit it, but she was not blind. With a great sense of relief, she noticed that none of the children had looked up at her, glad that they had not seen her indiscretion.

Aries words from their first day in the sewer came back to her, “What is the matter with you?”

What **was** the matter with her?

Had her world fallen down around her so completely that she would, without conscious volition, think a thought like that?  She remembered The Rat King, and how he had told her of his general, how he did not know yet of his destiny.  She knew this man had to be the general he was referring to, and if he was not, she was afraid of what that general might be.  This rat, this mutant in the next room moving like a ghostly shadow, was the most imposing person she had ever met in her life.  The way he spoke left no room for rebuke, when she had done so, she knew she was doing so at her peril.  The way he moved left no room for thoughtlessness.  It made her feel as if her own mind was too quick to catch a hold of, much like a poem that flashed through her mind, only to leave before she could write it down.  The way he carried himself left no room for refusal, he knew his own mind, he knew what he wanted, and the very few times she had stood in his way, she knew, too, that was at her own risk. 

What made him all the more daunting was the fear that underlay all of that.  She did not know what he was afraid of, she hadn’t been able to ascertain that yet, but it was there.  Under the control, under the surety, under the beauty of his movement, was a fear of something that she didn’t understand.  It showed when he slept, or when he was pain, or when he looked at the photograph of the Turtles.  The fear of whatever it was, emerged and wiggled its fingers, taunting him when he was at his weakest, and she did not have the courage to be rude enough to ask about it.

So, what was the matter with her?  She didn’t want to contemplate what was the matter with her.  But there was nothing but time, and time leads itself to contemplation. 

He was…civilized.  Had she surrounded herself with such crudeness for so long, that being polite, that the “More, please,” that had tickled her so, meant so much to her?  He knew how to eat dinner at the ‘table’, he knew how to speak to someone.  He knew how to play the game, the game where they both knew they were enemies, that what was happening in this little space was illicit, yet it was dutifully ignored, pushed to the side and not looked at too closely.

How far had she fallen that she was grateful for that?

***

Splinter saw her poke her head, ever so slightly, through the door to watch him.  He heard her breathing quicken, he saw the flush form on her face before she retreated.  He didn’t have to be looking at her to see it.    He didn’t have to be looking for it to see it.  He squashed down a grain of anger as it occurred to him, he would most likely have seen it even if he didn’t want to look for it.  There were a great many things he was seeing lately that he did not want to perceive.

She perceived also, and it angered him.  Aries had mentioned to her in passing about her poetry writing, and she had a read a few to them as she completed them.  She was very good, actually, but it brought to forefront how observant she was.  It had taken her little time to figure out whatever small routine he may have instituted for himself.   He surmised it would take her just as little time to become familiar with any part of it he would institute, like this one.  She had figured out how he liked his tea, how he liked to be served, how far she could safely push him.  She had figured out how to calm him down, even with her bounding energy.

He had awoken from nightmares, of his sons being crushed by giant aliens, of being sliced like cucumbers by The Shredder, of being cut down like blades of grass by the Foot.  Each time he had come back to reality from his dreams, she had already been awake, stroking his forehead, sometimes with her hand, and sometimes with a cool washcloth.  “You had a nightmare,” she would tell him, as if he didn’t already know, and then try to lull him back to sleep.  “You heal when you sleep,” she would say.

Twice, when he was feigning sleep, or trying to go to sleep by feigning it, she had reached over to stroke his cheek, or the edge of his ears.  Whenever she touched him, he wanted to swat her hand away, wanted to be left alone  It was a violation for her to touch him without his permission, it was almost a violation to touch him with it.  She was taking advantage of someone she thought, at the time, was defenseless in sleep, and it galled him. As soon as her hand withdrew, he ached to feel her touch him again, anywhere, on his pinky toe, the tip of his tail, anywhere.  He hated the conflicted sensations, the paradoxes he was having to deal with, when he thought he had mastered the paradox in this world.

He shouldn’t be irked about her discernment, he had the upper hand, if for no other reason than her continued insistence on using her ‘magic’.  He hadn’t heard her call it that, only the children, but she had not corrected them either.  Each time he felt the heat coming from her palms, along with it came impressions of what was going on inside of her at the time.  Sometimes the first thing that would hit him was annoyance, sometimes compassion.  Then, like peeling the layers of an onion, other sensations would come, each time they ended in the same pattern—loneliness, longing, desire, and at the bottom of it all a deep gratitude.

When the sensation came to desire, something that he knew was buried deep down in her, barely above the very bottom layer of feelings, he would feel a jolt of revoltion.  Whom she was desiring, he didn’t know.  He could easily find out, all he had to do was stretch out a little bit while she was laying hands on him in such a manner, and he could probably find whatever he wanted to from her.  The fact that she was desirous of someone, had constant wanting for someone, that she was too undisciplined to keep to herself made him angry.  How dare she share that she wanted someone, when he was in a state like this.

When she had barely popped her head around the corner, he had for a tiny moment thought she was going to tell him to stop.  He would have to have a confrontation with her if she said so.  He was done conceding, he was done encouraging her to win at this game they were playing, and it was time now for him to win.  Despite his great patience, honed by many, many years of Ninjitsu practice, even he got tired of losing.  Capitulating, he reminded himself.

It had been a long, long time since he’d played this game.  More than 15 years, this game of who shall stand down first.  For it was always standing down, never a true loss. It was a game he played much, and well, in his youth with his peers.  He had played it with Oroku Saki when they were friends.  He had played a great game.  His sons did not play the game with him, they did not dare. It was a game played between perceived equals.  Tang Shen had played the game with him, but never with the fervor of this tiny, golden thing.

He stopped in mid-move and shook his head.  His thoughts of his wife, and his thoughts of this woman tending to him had started to blend together over the two weeks of being conscious.  His mind, if he did not pay attention, and he was almost always paying attention, would chatter a constant comparison between the two. 

Tang Shen’s beauty, her entire demeanor, was like the full moon on a cloudless night.  She was tall and willowy, an ethereal creature blessing the Earth with her presence.  Her skin had been pale, creamy, with a white luminescence behind it that only enhanced her beauty.  Her brown eyes, almost black, were the backdrop of stars as the light reflected off of them.  Her long, black hair was the night, brought down in human form to lay upon her head and absorb all the light that touched it, just like the sky.  Her spirit was gentle, like a spring night, with the threat of a fierceness to rival a spring thunderstorm, bright white lightening shooting from the black clouds in wrath.  When the thunderstorm was spent, she was again the moon again, in the dark sky surrounded by stars.

The Phoenix was not like that at all.  She tiny, like a fairy, all she needed was wings and she would easily fly away and land on a flower, never touching the Earth at all.   Her skin was pale and bright, its loveliness like the white of the sun at midday.  Her agate green eyes accentuated her smile, which gleamed with warmth, her face surrounded by golden tresses, streaked with white. Like the sun, behind the warmth was the threat of a fire that could easily burn anything in its path to a crisp.  Like the sun, moving over the sky, burning the desert sand, once it had lowered, it was a sweet warmth again, warmth that made living things grow.

No, she was not like his beloved wife at all.

 


	59. Chapter 59

Phoenix stood up one evening, after another dinner of eggs and rice, this time with a little bit of carrot thrown in, and announced, “I am going out to clinic.”  She had to get out of here.  If she stayed in here a moment longer, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say or do to someone.  She was constantly have to rein herself in when she was near Splinter.  Her hands would reach out of their own accord to touch him.  She wanted to feel the heat of his body next to hers, as she did at night, when the temperature dropped and she slept not an arm’s length away from her.  She wanted him to be sick, she wanted him to stay ill, so that he would not be able to leave.

No one said anything at her announcement.

She began packing things into her crocheted messenger bags, and slung them over her shoulder.  Aries stood up, “I’ll get some water,” he said quietly.

“You will stay here and take care of your brother,” she pointed at Arcos, who was currently sitting with a dandelion poultice around his middle.  “Take that off of him in about an hour.”

Aries shoulders slunk.

“And make sure Splinter has whatever he needs,” she said, her voice brusque.

“I guess that means I am going with you?” Medusa crawled off of the mat she was laying on, and slithered slowly toward the double doors.

“It does.”  She smiled at the three she was leaving behind, and said, “Be good!” before disappearing out the sliding double doors.

The aching did not go away when she’d separated from him, but seemed to grow stronger, so that it grabbed her chest and squeezed.  She knew it was wrong to wish him sick.  She wondered if the wish made her tingly energy less effective or not.  But she wanted him to stay, even though they were playing a game of ignorance.  And she knew that he couldn’t stay.

“Mama, we need to talk,” Arcos had told her quietly one morning, when Splinter was doing whatever it was he did in the other room. 

She didn’t want to talk to him.  She didn’t want to discuss what she knew he was going to discuss.  “Yes?”

“We need a new place to live.”

That had not been what she was expecting him to say.  “What’s wrong with this place?”

“He knows where it is,” Arcos threw his head toward the sliding double doors.

Her heart sank.

“I know you like his company, Mama,” Arcos’ voice was gentle, “but eventually his people are going to come and find him, and us being here with him is already highly dangerous.  We are going to need somewhere else to go to be safe.”

She remembered the unbidden thought, instructing her, _Safe_.  But at the moment, it is was silent.

She nodded reluctantly, “You’re right.  If no one else, his Turtles will come to find him…”  Arcos looked at her with sympathy.  “I guess you and your brother and sister can start ‘shopping’ for a new home.”

He had smiled, “It might be a while before we have to move,” he said helpfully.   “He doesn’t seem to be healing very fast.”

Phoenix had shook her head.  “He’s healing very fast,” she corrected.  “He was just very hurt.”

While they were cleaning the rooms, when they first moved in, they had wondered where the hatch in their living area went.

“We should open it and find out,” Aries said.

“What if it filled this room up with sewer water?” Medusa asked.

“Or worse,” Arcos piped up, “just sewage?”

“We turn it slowly, and see if it leaks any, we close it again,” Aries said.

The three turned to their mother, who looked at the rat on laid in the corner of the room.  “We only have one way in and out,” she said.  “It would be good to have an escape route.”

So they’d turned the wheel, all holding their breath.  No water came out.  Aries continued to turn it, when he opened it, the smell that came from it made them all gag.

Holding his mouth, Aries poked his head in it.  “It’s a pipe, it leads down.  That means that it can’t be used to fill this chamber.”

The other three of them had gone over to it and peered inside. 

“Who’s going down there?” Medusa asked.

The other three of them turned and looked at her.

“Aww,” she moaned, putting her finger in the pipe and wiping it.  “It’s all nasty in there.  What if I can’t get back up?”

“I’ll hold your tail,” Arcos said, “and we can lower you in.”

Medusa had clicked her tongue, and then climbed in the pipe.  “This is so gross,” her voice echoed down the pipe.

Arcos took her tail in his paws, and as she stretched out, he strained on holding her.  “Aries, I need your help,” he said softly.

Phoenix bit her lip with worry.  How badly had he been hurt that he needed help?

“The pipe is longer than I am,” Medusa called.  “Let me go, I think I can get back up.”

The boys looked at each other, and then let her tail go.  It disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel. 

“Drop me a flashlight!” she called.

Aries rolled his flashlight down the pipe to her.

“It’s another chamber,” Medusa said, “only smaller.  It stinks worse down here than it does up there!”  She was silent for a moment, then they could hear her calling up the pipe, and the light shining.  “There are two ways tunnels out of the room,” her head emerged, covered in grime.  “We have an escape route.”

They had not examined anything further, the business of living getting in the way.

But when Arcos had brought up finding somewhere else to live, she’d said to him, “The next time that Splinter and I are gone out walking, then two of you can head down there and find us somewhere else to go.”

Her son had nodded, and that had been the end of that as far as Phoenix was involved.

“Where are we going?” Medusa asked, bringing her back to the present.

She stopped and tilted her head, listening for some direction.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I guess we just wander around until we stop.”

Medusa sighed and shook her head.  Mama was back in full force.

***

Splinter had to fight demons of his past the entire time he’d been awake.  With Phoenix and Medusa gone, however, he now had to fight demons of his present.

As soon as the women were out of earshot, Arcos and Aries behavior deteriorated.  Their talk became cruder, their shoves harder, and their laughs more raucous.  They began to act like…boys.

Like his boys.

“I thought she’d never leave!” Aries looked up as if he was thanking some unseen force.  “She’s driving me crazy!!”

“You deserve it,” Arcos said, “for ramming into me.”

“I told you I didn’t mean it,” Aries snapped.

“I know,” Arcos said.  “You gotta do something about that anger, wool-for-brains.  We’re supposed to be pummeling…” his voice trailed off and he threw a sidelong glance at Splinter.  “Not each other.”

“Not my fault you’re a wuss,” Aries slapped Arcos’ hurt side.

The bear winced, but smiled.  “I’m going to get you for that when I’m better.”

“You promise?” Aries batted his eyes and put on a flirtatious smile.

“You’re thinking with the wrong head, man,” Arcos laughed.  Aries was not far behind.  “You are hard up.  Is that why you’ve been so testy?”  He shoved his brother in the shoulder.

Aries shoved him back, “I’m not testy.”

Arcos just stared at him.

Aries huffed.  “I don’t know why I’m testy.”  He looked about, “I guess it’s being down here.  It’s so…”

“…not home,” Arcos finished for him.

“Yeah,” Aries nodded.  Then after a moment of silence, he added, “Now, it might be more homey if Myra, or Pepper, or Bunny, or Afrika, or Valley…shit, I’d take Aila at his point.”

Arcos pushed his foot at his brother, his face twisting into a mask of disgust.  “That’s gross, bro!  I don’t want to know all that.”

“It’s just because you’re afraid that they’re comparing us and you are found wanting,” Aries voice took on a British accent.

“I wouldn’t touch a girl you’ve slept with, with a ten foot pole.”

“Why not?” Aries sounded offended.  “What wrong with my girls?”

“Well,” Arcos put his hands behind is head as he drawled.  “There’s an awful lot of them, number one.”

Aries blew on his knuckles and polished them on his shoulder.

“And they’re all skanks.”

Aries scowled.  “They’re not all skanks!”

Arcos twisted his lips.  “Yeah, they are all skanks.”

“You’re one to talk,” Aries scowled.  “It isn’t like the ones you’ve slept with aren’t skanks.”

“Not as many skanks as you.”

Aries opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it.  “Yeah, I guess they’re kinda skanky.”

“Kinda?”

“Yes,” Aries shot him a look.  “Kinda.”

“Why don’t you just pick one and make her your woman?” Arcos asked.

“I don’t want a skank for my woman,” he replied.

Arcos looked confused.  “What you sleeping with all these women for, then?”

In an attempt to avoid the question, Aries turned to the rat.  “You got a woman, Splinter?”

Splinter was taken by surprise.  He was observing them, as he’d done with the family so many times, blending in with the background.  He hadn’t expected either of them to address him, and certainly not with a question like that.  “No,” he said firmly.

“You got a wife?” Aries asked.

“No,” he said, his voice raising.

“How is he going to have a wife if he doesn’t have a woman?”  Arcos shoved his brother.

“I’m going to have a wife, why can’t he?”  He said it as if it were self -explanatory.

“Where are you going to get a wife?” Arcos’ voice was indignant. 

“The same place I’d get a woman,” Aries head shook in derision.  “The same place I’d get a lay.”

“How are you going to get married?” Arcos’ voice grew more serious.  “You’re a mutant.”

“I don’t know,” Aries threw his hands in the air.  “Go on the rooftop at night and sing ‘Oompa, Loompa, Oompidy, Doo?’”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Arcos laughed.

Aries tried to have a serious face, but was letting little guffaws out in between his words.  “Would singing another song be more appropriate?”

“Oh yeah,” Arcos held his side as he laughed, “The End by the Doors.”

Aries joined in, unable to keep his laughter in any longer.

Splinter simply watched, comparing and contrasting their behavior with their mother absent and with her present.  He knew his sons acted much more unruly when they thought he couldn’t hear, and was quite certain they were more unruly than that when he wasn’t with them.  He’d been a boy himself, after all, he knew how boys acted.  But for some reason, it had surprised him that the bear and ram would act in such a manner, and it surprised him that he was surprised. 

Their mother would never had allowed such a conversation to take place, nor should she have.  It would have been in very poor taste to have such a conversation in front of her, and was in rather poor taste to have it in front of him.  She’d not allow them to shove or hit each other the way they did, either, the way that boys bonded, the way that a boy did not turn in a ‘wuss’, as Aries had so eloquently put it.

After the laughter had died down, Arcos turned back to Splinter, a wide smile on his face.  “Who are those Turtles you have a photo of?” he asked.

Splinter blinked.  The question was so blatant, and so unrelated to anything the boys had been talking about.  He picked the photo up, looking down at it.   He had assumed they knew who they were, they had encountered them before.  But then, how would they know his connection to them, other than photograph?  “They are my sons,” he told him.

Both of them looked at him in wonder.  “Your sons?” Arcos asked hesitantly.

“Yes.”

“How old are they?”

“They are 15,” he answered.

Aries slapped Arcos’ arm, “They’re not that much younger than us.”

“How old are you?” Splinter asked, not sure when he’d get such an opportunity to glean this kind of information again, and turning the conversation away from himself.

“We turned 19 in August,” Aries said.  “I think Medusa was 18 going on 10, though.”

“You were 18 going on 10,” Arcos shot back.

“Mama was 18 going on 49,” Aries chuckled.

Arcos snortled.  “Hooo, she’s gonna tan your tail if she hears you talking like that.”

Aries put his back, and shouted, “Isn’t it nifty?  The Phoenix is almost 50!”

Both boys fell over laughing.

Arcos, when he’d gotten a hold of himself, turned back to Splinter.  “How old are you, sir?”

“Older than your mother,” he assured them.

Again, both boys fell over, gasping for breath in-between laughs.

 

 


	60. Chapter 60

When one asks the Universe for something, it will show up.  It might not show up in the form one hoped for, or even in the form one would find pleasing.  It might come in small increments or it might come as a mighty epiphany, but it will eventually present itself.

Splinter had wanted to know more about this family, to glean information to either secure his position, or to allay or confirm any suspicions he might have.  The two boys, obviously tired of the constraints of female company were proving to be very informative, with little to no coaxing at all.

“What are we going to get Mama next year for her birthday?” Aries asked.  “We already made her learn to crochet.”

Arcos thought a minute, crossing his large legs to change position.  “Reading glasses!”

“Oh, oh!” Aries spoke though his laughter, “that book we saw that time on menopause!”  He pointed at his brother.  “What was that called?”

“Navigating the Change,” Arcos said with a dramatically deep voice.

In between chuckles, Aries asked, “What do you think Chategris would have given her?”

“He’d have thrown her a big party and would have tried to give her an expensive gift that she’d not take.”

“Remember that necklace he gave her all those years ago, that she put at the bottom of the vase?”  Aries asked.  “I wonder if it’s still there.”

“I wonder if the juniper bush and the catnip are still there,” Arcos said.

With that comment, the mood in the room changed abruptly.  It was as if a black cloud came down from the darkened skylight to rain on the people under it.

“You had a garden at your other…home?” Splinter asked.

“Yeah,” Aries said, physically turning his body on his rump so he was facing Splinter.  “It was Mama’s really.  It was her medicine garden.  She grew most of her herbs there.  We would grow some vegetables too.  We put up a bee box, but no bees ever decided to live in it.  Mama would work in it a lot when we were out playing with the Grey Cats.”

“Grey Cats?” Splinter prodded.

“They are…were…our friends,” Arcos said, his deep voice quiet.  “We don’t know what happened to them.”

“They were humans?”  How did this group of mutants get friends?  April and Casey were not within the bell curve on their acceptance of giant, anthropomorphic animals.

“No,” Arcos shook his head.  “They were all mutants.  Mama has ever been the only human.”

“All mutants?” Splinter asked.  “A group of them?”  These people knew groups of mutants…he knew of only one other group of mutants, but they were accompanied by a human, even if that human had less humanity that the animal mixtures around him.  This family had friends, lovers, an entire social network of mutants, right here, above on the streets.

Arcos and Aries looked at each other, undecidedly.  Then Arcos answered, “Yeah.  More like a war band.”

“It isn’t a democracy that’s for sure,” Aries put in.

“Or a benevolent dictatorship.”

“I wish we were in a benevolent dictatorship,” Aries said wistfully.

Arcos smacked him in the head.  “We are in a benevolent dictatorship, wool-for-brains.  We’re even in a republic sometimes.”

“We’re not in a benevolent dictatorship,” Aries argued.  “I was forced to stay here with you.  That’s not very benevolent.  That’s an evil dictator.”

“That’s not an evil dictator!”

“All parents are evil dictators, I tell you!” Aries put his hand in the air to punctuate his dramatic statement.

“All parents?” Splinter muttered.

“All parents,” Aries answered.  With a huge grin, he pointed behind him at the door.  “Especially that one.”

“Oh yeah,” Arcos rolled his eyes.  “The evil dictator who raised you from babyhood, loves the guts out of you, and keeps you from killing yourself doing something stupid.”

“She doesn’t keep me from killing myself,” Aries’ grin was gone.  “We keep her from getting killed!”

“She can take care of herself just fine.”

“Even without us and Chategris?” Aries shot back.

“I think so,” Arcos’ voice was thoughtful.  “And I’m not sure how much good Chategris ever really did.”

“He saved our butts more than once,” Aries reminded him.

“And we saved his even more, or have you forgotten about that?”

“I haven’t forgotten about that.”

“Who is this Chategris?” Splinter asked.

Both boys turned back to the rat.  “He’s the leader of the Grey Cats, the warlord of the warband,” Arcos explained.  “He and Mama are…not friends exactly, but I guess as close as you can get a friend with a warlord.”

“You did not live with them, then?”

“Oh no!” both boys shook their heads vigorously.  “That isn’t a place where anybody would want to live.”

“Why?”

“They’re always fighting with each other.  You can’t trust anyone.  No one looks out for anyone,” the boys exchanged knowing glances, laced with sadness. 

“Then why did other mutants live there?”  It seemed to Splinter like a simple question.

Both boys looked at him as if he had spaghetti coming out of his ears.  “Because they have nowhere else to go,” Aries said.

“At least they aren’t alone.  Chategris might be nasty, but he clothes them, and feeds them, and makes sure they have medical care.  Even if the medical care is our mother.”

“She doesn’t think much of him,” Aries put in.  “He thinks a whole lot of her, though.”  The boy’s lecherous smile was back.

Arcos punched his brother playfully, “That is so never going to happen.”

“I thought it was, that time before…” Aries’ voice trailed off.

“Nah,” Arcos waved his hand dismissively.  “You heard what they were saying.”

“No,” he said.

Arcos rolled his eyes.  “How she was trying to explain marriage to him, and he wasn’t having any of it.”  The bear pointed at his brother, “That’s what she’s talking about when she keeps going on about integrity.”

“Integrity, shintegrity,” Aries said.  “Why would she be trying to explain marriage to Chategris?”

“Because he’s a jackass and she wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole!”

“He wouldn’t mind her touching his pole.”

“That is disgusting, man,” Arcos’ voice was not playful.  “How can you think stuff like that about your mother?”

Aries sighed.  “God, I miss Myra.”

Arcos was quiet a moment.  “Me, too.”

“I miss everyone,” Aries continued.  “Even jackass Chategris.”

“I wonder what he’s doing for a doctor now,” Arcos said.

“He might not even need a doctor,” Aries muttered.

“Your mother was his doctor?”  Splinter had only been able to ascertain a little about Phoenix’s penchant for healing from her, here was a chance to get some more information.  He seemed to be getting little pieces of a puzzle, and a few of them went together to form a small part of the picture.  But the pictures didn’t seem to go together.  These mutants were guarding, or look for, mutagen.  The same mutagen that his sons had unleashed upon the city.  They cavorted with a warband, to the point that they had very close ties with them, apparently.  Yet, here they were, in the sewer, helping him, when they all thought he was their enemy.  It didn’t make sense.

 “She’s everyone’s doctor,” Arcos explained.  “That’s what she’s doing tonight, going out finding mutants to doctor.”

“That’s what clinic is,” Aries added.  “And it is sooooo boring.”

“Boring?” Splinter encouraged.

“It takes forever for her to decided where to stop, and sometimes you have to wait hours and hours for someone to come,” the ram rolled his eyes.

“She stops randomly?”

“I guess,” Aries turned to Arcos.  “She just tell us, ‘This is where we stop.’  I don’t know how she decides where to stop.”

“Me either,” Arcos said with a shrug.  “But when she does, someone shows up, and she doctors them up.”

“There is this flock of crows,” Aries started.

“Murder,” Arcos corrected.

Aries shot him a look, “Murder of crows…and there is always something wrong with them.  One of them is great big hypochondriac, he’s convinced he has the worse disease there is with whatever symptoms he has.”

Arocs snarffled, his version of a laugh, “Mama started giving him this nasty combination of herbs and told him it was a cure all.  That way, when he comes and complains to her, she gets to fuss at him for not taking his medicine.”

Both boys apparently thought this a great trick, for their chuckling took a while to subside.

“She doctors up many mutants, then?”

“All the ones we know of,” Arcos said.  “Just like she’s done you,” he pointed at the rat.  “You don’t think she just learned how to do all that yesterday, do you?”

The tone was playful, but Splinter disliked the impertinence of it.  It was a tone that Phoenix allowed them to take with her, one that she even gave back to them occasionally, when she was in a playful mood.  It was disrespectful, and it was irresponsible of a parent to allow it to happen.  “That was not the impression I received, no,” he said.

Aries regarded Splinter closely, a knowledge in his eyes that the rat could not immediately identify.  “She went through a lot to heal you, sir.”

Splinter was quiet for a moment, and then nodded.  “I am grateful for your mother’s attention.  As I am sure all of the mutants she helps are.”

“Most mutants know of The Phoenix, it’s one of the first things that a mutant learns about on the streets of New York.  There is only one emergency room, and it isn’t always easy to find.  Especially when you aren’t looking for a human in a back ally.”  Aries voice was very defensive.

The first things a mutant learns on the streets of New York…the statement made Splinter uncomfortable.  He was not on the streets of New York City, but others were…  

“C’mon, man,” Aries said, breaking the conversation, “I need to change your poultice.”

“Uhhh,” Arcos moaned as he got up to follow his brother.  “You’re going to get bits of herbs all over me.”

The two began moved their conversation onward, discussing how to rebuild their gymnasium, and what materials they could use to do so.

The boys, they were 19, not at all much older than his own.  Grown up, but not grown up.   They seemed to have a deep respect for their mother, and he wondered how she had imbued it, with her coddling them so.  If she treated them the way he’d seen her do when they were grown up, how had she spoiled them when they were young?

He knew he garnered respect from his sons because he was an elder, but he knew that Americans did not hold the same standard to respect those who were older than they.  His sons respected him because he knew better, he knew more, he was more experienced, he was more powerful…he could physically overpower any of his children.  He would be able to do so for a very, very long time.  His father had been able to best him most of his life, only when he had been completely grown, and practicing under his father’s tutelage all of his life, was he able to beat him.  But these mutants must have been able to best their mother physically almost all of their lives.  All three of them were more than twice her size.  He could not see her beating them into submission when they were very small to the point that it would hold sway over their behavior even now.    

But they had a deep respect for her, almost an awe when they spoke, even when it was playful.  It was also blatantly apparent they had an abiding love for her also.  They were not unaware of her adoration for them, Arcos’ comment, “…loves the guts out of you…” made that abundantly clear.  But instead of acting like spoiled brats, for the most part, the three of them were very well behaved.  They obeyed their mother with little fuss, did their chores without complaining, and each seemed to know where they fit into the scheme of things.

Splinter did not like not understanding things.  It was a rare occurrence for him, and when it happened, it did not happen for long.  But this, he still did not understand.

***

Phoenix and Medusa were ducked behind a dumpster, watching as a group of Kraangdroids and humans with blobs for heads meandered by.  They’d been stuck there for over an hour, unable to get away from the spot without being seen.

They had not met any patients during their outing, but it wasn’t fruitless.  Several battles had been evident in the empty streets, they were littered with spent bullet shells.  They gathered up plastic grocery bags of them.  Despite there being no one buying groceries, there was no shortage of grocery bags.  “I will make you a basket to hold them,” Medusa told her.

“I will feel better having a little more ammo,” Phoenix confided in her daughter.  “I am always terrified it’s going to run out.”

“You haven’t used any yet,” Medusa reminded her.

“I will eventually.”

Medusa had nodded sadly at the statement.

They’d gotten caught in their current spot while picking up the shells from a previous battle.  They heard the rhythmic stomping of Kraangdroids, and had hidden as soon as possible.  All of them had been surprised they’d not engaged in battle with anyone for so long, and it made the tension of it happening rise with each visit to the surface.  Before the Kraangdroids had come into view, they saw something else, and it terrified both of them.

Standing on the top of a building, often the path that they themselves travelled, stood a group of mutants, with a man covered in armor. 

“Why are they out in the open?” Medusa whispered.

“I don’t know, Curly Que,” Phoenix answered.

“They’re not being attacked.”

“No…” Phoenix’s voice trailed off.  “But that fish with the metal legs and that skeleton dog…”

“They were at the Battle of the Pretty Building,” Medusa finished for her.

“I don’t recognize anyone else,” Phoenix said.

“Me either, but there is a human with them.”

“Yes,” she answered.  “He certainly looks to be fully human.”

They stared silently at the group, “They must be with the Kraang,” Medusa said.

Phoenix nodded her head.   The Kraang did have mutants on their side.  Not only did they have mutants, they had mutant ninjas.  She knew of only one other set of mutant ninjas, and she had a photo of them in her home.

 


	61. Chapter 61

Boredom had become a constant companion to The Children of the Phoenix and their mother, during the day.  With the weather getting warmer, the need for so many candles, which they made from twine and melted crayons, wasn’t needed, which took away one of their time consuming chores.  Their stocks of items were plentiful, what items they could get in the very early spring.  Their home was as clean as it could get.  They were reduced to making more blankets, and crocheting more mats, and weaving more squares of plarn for no particular reason.  Phoenix had yet to find a single soul on her outings at clinic, either above ground or in the sewer.  The unbidden thought had been frustratingly silent in directing her.  It made her worry that there was no one to direct to.  Arcos drew, Aries whittled, and Medusa slept, but even these things became blah and uninviting.

 Splinter, who lengthened his practice each day, was finding the boredom much less than it was during the beginning of his convalescence.    Phoenix was surprised by how dedicated he was in his practice, though she recognized precious little from it, and was embarrassed by her ignorance of any Asian culture in general.  Her children and she never practiced with the commitment he was doing now, and he was not fully well yet.  No wonder his sons were so good.

When her boys had told her about his revelation of the photo at his bedside, she’d been shocked speechless, a very rare occurrence indeed.  He considered them his family, not just a unit or group or gang or team.  She had not heard anyone else in the ten years of helping mutants refer to anyone as their family.  The closest she had seen was the murder of crows she occasionally dealt with.  But even they did not refer to each other as family members, merely as flock members.

She wanted to ask him about his sons.  She hadn’t gotten the courage to say a word, fear, grabbing a hold of her vocal chords, that the game they were playing would be shattered, and some awful consequence would come from the rules being exposed.  So she’d said nothing, she’d asked nothing, waiting for him to speak.

True to form, he remained silent on the subject.

To allay their boredom, they played games.  “Come play with me!” Phoenix had jumped up one afternoon, addressing Aries.

“Play what?” he asked, getting up.

“Under and over!” she cried.

All three of the kids groaned, but got up from their positions on the floor with smiles on their faces. 

They lined up, with Arcos in the back, his legs spread in a V.  Phoenix climbed onto his shoulders, and then placed each of her hands on his giant paws.  Keeping her arms straight, he raised her into the air, so she was balancing above him.

As soon as she was hoisted up, Aries, in the front of the line, turned around and bolted underneath Medusa, who had simply made an upside down U with her body, and then under Arcos’ legs to jump up behind him.  As he was crawling to his new position, Phoenix began to bend over backward.  The objective of the game, Splinter surmised, was that one of the mutants was to catch their mother before she hit the ground.

He was impressed with the level of physical dexterity it took to play ‘Under and Over.’.  The child was to be fully upright and ready to catch Phoenix on their shoulders by the time she was fully bent and about to lose her balance from the center of gravity being too far forward.  She would land on the next child’s shoulders, and then the one in front would go under the legs of the other two behind him or her, and be a landing pad for Phoenix on the next round.

There was a great deal of laughing and squealing as the quad made their way around the living space.  On the other end of the room, Aries was once again first in line.  He slipped through Medusa’s body, and then slid through Arcos’ legs.  He jumped up too soon, however, and rammed the bear in the crotch.  Arcos faltered, sending his mother tumbling down on top of the ram.   Once she was down, Arcos took a high pitched breath in, grabbed himself in between his legs, and squeaked, “Ouch!”

The other three were trying very hard to control their laughter.  “I’m sorry, man!” Aries was immediately up and holding his brother’s shoulders, as if trying to keep him from collapsing.  “I didn’t mean it.”

“It hurt,” Arcos said with an unnaturally high voice.

Aries, Medusa, and Phoenix all burst out laughing even harder.

“We don’t have any ice, Teddy Bear,” Phoenix managed to get out, “I am not sure how else to help you.”

“I wasn’t planning on having our heads collide in quite that way, bro,” Aries said.

While fighting a laugh, Phoenix managed to get out, “Aries!”

Splinter gave a little smile and shook his head.

Medusa caught him.  Pointing in his direction, she gasped melodramatically, “He does have a sense of humor!”

Phoenix had not caught the small smile, but she had caught his head shaking.  “And at such a thing, Splinter,” she chuckled.  “You should be ashamed!”  She waggled her finger at him while trying to stop her own giggling.

“I think I’m a eunuch,” Arcos said in his unnaturally high voice.

“Go sit down,” Phoenix pointed to the wall, having gotten a hold of herself.  “I’ll make us all something to drink, and see if that helps any.”

“How is tea going to help him any?” Medusa guffawed.

“It might make him forget that he is going to pay us back for this later,” she said.

****

Splinter had never been a long sleeper.  He didn’t need much of it, he never had, and as he’d mastered his meditation practice, he needed even less.  So, in the middle of the night, with only two candles to illuminate the room, he would get up.  Taking one of the candles, and going into the cold outer room, he went through katas, simple things, mindless things, to give his body something to do.  He was well aware that Phoenix knew he was going, but she made no move to stop him.

This night, however, he heard her come to the sliding double door, her bare feet gently slapping the floor as she walked.  She came fully into the room, and sat down on a milk carton, her bare legs shining in the candlelight, and watched him.

He finished the movement, and then stopped and looked at her.  She was smiling at him with a faraway smile, as if she was watching the sunset over the water, or snowflakes falling in a night sky.  “I decided to be rude,” she said quietly, “and see what it is you are doing in here at night.”

He put his hands behind his back, and walked over to her.  “Just something similar to what you do when you come in here in the mornings.”

She shook her head, “Oh no,” she chuckled.  “I don’t look anything like that when I move.”

Splinter raised his eyebrows in query.

She tilted her head to the side, her long hair falling on her thighs, and looked to be considering something.  Making a decision in her mind, she said, “Sit down,” in almost a whisper.

He did so, on a low storage container, putting his hands on his knees, and regarding her in the same manner she regarded him.

“You move like…” she twisted her lips, searching her mind for an explanation, “…like you are projection on reality.  Like this space,” she waved her hands to indicate the air about them, “doesn’t exist to you.”

“It only takes practice,” he said.

“I don’t believe you,” she answered gently, that faraway smile still on her lips.  “I have never seen anyone move like you.  You walk like you’re floating on air.  There is no jerking in any of your movements.  It’s like a ballerina a thousand times over.”

He turned his head and gave her a dubious look.

“You move…beautiful.”  Her eyes traveled from his to his ears, and around the rest of his face, going to the tip of his muzzle and then back to his eyes.

Her look was filled with wonder, and he could think of nothing with which to reply.

She saved him from having to, “You are a hard sleeper when you sleep,” she noted.  “But you don’t need much sleep.”

The stated observation, for the first time, did not rankle him.  Was he becoming soft that a compliment would affect him so?  “You are a light sleeper,” he countered, “and get most of your rest when you nap during the day.”

She put her hands up and smiled broadly, the shadows from the candle playing on her shirt.  “I am a vivid dreamer,” she corrected him.  “And once I wake up, it is hard for me to go back to sleep.”

“Do you have many nightmares?”  He wasn’t sure why he asked.

“They’re not all nightmares,” she assured him.  “Some of them are pleasant.  I had this dream a few days ago,” she said, her voice still just above a whisper, “that Medusa was the size she was at about ten years old, and she was wrapped around my arm and torso.  We were at an amusement park, and we were going to ride the rollercoaster, but they didn’t have any seats that would accommodate us.  So the manager had to get someone to take the chair out of one of the cars so we could fit in it and ride the coaster.”  She chuckled.  “Not a bad dream.  Just a dream.”

Splinter took a breath, not answering.

“Are your nightmares about your sons?” she asked gently.

The question didn’t surprise him, but it hung in the air between them, heavy and pregnant.  If he answered this question, he knew that some barrier was being lifted, that she was attempting to lift it with the asking of the question itself.   He was not positive that she was an enemy, but he could not bring himself to admit fully that she wasn’t.  He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she thought he was her enemy, that she danced around his affiliations, whatever they might be, so as not to touch them.  With this question, though, ones collaborators may be brought into sharper focus for both of them.

He made the decision without thinking, from the place between thoughts that he instructed his sons, so often, to work from.  The conscious part of his mind, the Observer, was surprised by his answer.  “Yes,” he said.  “Many of them are.”

A look of great sympathy came over her face, and she seemed to struggling with what to say next.  “Do you think they are…alright?”

This woman, who had been injured by his sons, whose children had been injured by his sons, who thought he was an enemy of hers, who avoided any conversation of where he was from, where he was going, or how he was going to get there…this woman was asking him if he thought his sons were alright.  He drew his eyebrows together, and wondered briefly if he had heard her correctly.

“I do not know,” he said sadly.

She reached out her hand and wrapped it around his.  “I know you miss them,” she spoke softly.  “I bet they miss you, too.”

When she touched him, a jolt of recognition went through him again.  He didn’t know where Phoenix was familiar from, but she was familiar.  He had the sudden urge to take both of her hands in his, to squeeze them to make sure she was real and not an apparition in his fevered brain as he lie on the cold sewer floor.

She always looked him straight in the eye, her emotions clear in her look.  This look was one of longing, no he couldn’t be ascertaining it right.  The low light, him missing his boys, he was misreading her.

“Tell me about your sons,” she breathed.

It was as if the heavy question, while answered still hung like a great door between them, was opened.  A rush of memories flooded his mind, and he had trouble holding on to just one.  ‘Tell me about your sons.’  How could he tell her about his sons?  They were his life.

As if seeing his trouble articulating, she asked, “Have you had them since they were babies?”

He grabbed onto the anchor of a starting point.  “Yes,” he answered.

“So for fifteen years?  Have you raised them by yourself?”

“Yes,” he said again.

“I raised mine from babies too,” she told him, “by myself.”  There was a pause before she asked, “What are their names?”

This was something concrete that he could latch onto, something he could use to bring himself back to the here and now.  “Leonardo,” he said slowly, “Raphael, Donatello, and Michaelangelo.”

She giggled, like she’d been told a joke.  “You named them all after Renaissance men?”

He nodded.  “After the painters that I liked.”

“Do they have the talents of those people?”  Her eyes were wide with curiosity and her smile interested and good-natured.

“No,” he admitted.  “None of them are like their namesakes.”

“Mine aren’t either,” she whispered conspiratorially.

“They aren’t?” he asked, not sure what she meant.

It was her turn to shake her head.  “No,” she disclosed.  “I named them all after Greek figures in mythology.  I guess Aires is pretty ram-like, but that’s about it.”  She shrugged.  “Have you…” her lips twisted, but then straightened out again, “have you been a mutant that long?”

There was a long pause before he answered.  ‘Yes.”

A look of sympathy crossed her face, “You have done a great thing, then,” she said.

He shook his head, “I did what I had to do,” he answered.

“You didn’t have to do anything,” she told him.  “We always have a choice.”

He knew this.  He always knew this.  Life was a choice, each small choice leading to another choice, until all the choices became a lifetime.  One could change one’s course of action at any time, by choosing something different.  To have someone else say it, to have someone else affirm a choice was a powerful thing...  He knew that too, he used it all the time with his sons.  But he had forgotten how powerful it was, and the wash of pride that waved through him took him off guard.

“One could say the same thing of you,” he said.  He had to get the conversation off of him.  He could feel his defenses falling down around him, and that was not acceptable. 

She smiled at his comment.  “I would answer the same thing,” she answered.  “I did what I had to do.  I guess a better way for us to say it would be ‘I chose to do what needed to be done.’”

Splinter nodded.  “I chose to do what needed to be done.”

“Tell me about your sons,” she said again, her eyes still on his, her look soft.

He felt a crumbling inside of him, and a slight disgust with himself for letting it happen.   He’d gone soft in his years, he’d fought loneliness, he mourned what his life could have been, and it was weak of him.  But he could stop the falling of the stones he’d erected, if he tried.  If he opened his mouth, he would regret it, he knew.  He felt his heart clench in his chest, and she tilted her head to side, her long hair falling against her body, and looked at him expectantly.

He took a deep breath.  He told her about his sons.  He told her about how Leonardo was more than a father could ask for in a son, a pleaser, who put his own desires after the desire to please his father.  He told her about Raphael, how he was the hardest working of his sons, who practiced and practiced until he reached his goal, whatever that might be.  He told her about Donatello, and how inventive he was, how he could make anything out of nothing.  He told her about Michaelangelo, how the boy was so talented, how he could do whatever he chose to do when he actually chose to do it. 

She pulled her knees to her chest while he was talking, and listened quietly.  She smiled, and frowned, and looked surprised in all the right places.  She rested her head on her knees, her thin calves shining in the candlelight.  When he had finished, she said, “You love them very much.”

Again he felt pieces of him crumble.  How weak he was that affirmation from another person, something he should have been over so long ago, affirmation from someone who meant nothing to him, would have such an effect on him.

How could he not love his sons?  They were his entire life.

He couldn’t find his voice to answer her.

She looked toward the sliding double doors, light was beginning to creep in.  “It is about time when you get up and start your morning practice,” she said, turning back.   “You go ahead,” she stood up, her smile tender, “and I will make you some tea for when you are finished.”  She got up and went back into the other room, leaving him alone.

The room suddenly seemed much too big to contain only him.

 


	62. Chapter 62

She had not expected him to answer her when she asked him to tell her about his sons.  She had meant it as asking, but her second mention of it came out as a command.  A subversive command, but a command none-the-less.  She hadn’t meant it to be, she hardly thought of herself as subversive.   Then, he’d answered her.  He’d told her about his sons.   He had shone with pride with every mention of every aspect he’d told her about, whether it was trying or elating.  He hadn’t gone into a great many details, it was all broad statements, generalities to give to a stranger.  But she knew more now than she did, and she’d actually said it out loud—that they were his sons.

She wasn’t sure what had drawn her out into the other room.  He had gone, as he had been doing, and had simply been curious, and so been rude.  She was caught breathless by what she’d seen.  His body, which she was so intimately familiar with, even if only on a physician’s level, was strong and muscular, elongated slightly to accommodate the rat in him, and it moved like nothing she’d ever seen before in her life.  She had no idea what it was he was doing, the movements themselves were foreign to her, but he did them with a grace that was amazing.  The glow that wasn’t a glow surrounded him brightly, wavering as he moved.  She’d been caught in a type of trance, and had to sit down to watch him, not caring how rude it was, or what he would think of it.  She’d only felt a great swell of wonder at looking at him.

He’d not continued very long, but he’d stayed and talked.  And, at a command, had told her about his family.  He said more words that night than he’d said combined the entire time he’d been awake with them.  His voice was music, deep, each word punctuated, with his gorgeous accent.  She breathed in every word, words she could understand, not just the murmuring in the distance, not just a melody with the backdrop of dripping water.  Real words, with real meaning.

He hadn’t said a word about the Kraang or the Rat King.

She didn’t care.

As he talked, his facial expression did not change much, but she noticed that his ears did.  The little revelation that she’d had about them gave what he said an entirely new dimension.  While his face was not very expressive at all, his ears—his ears were very expressive!

She had already noticed that his ears turned toward the sound he was listening, especially if he was trying to catch something far away.  Several times she’d noticed his ears moving, only a few minutes later to hear a pair of her children coming down the passage way to their home.  He’d obviously heard them before she had.

When he was happy, his ears were in a slightly forward position and it was as if the tips were stretched toward the ceiling.   They were in a similar position when he was feeling pride, except they were not quite as erect, and they turned a little more to the side.  When he was annoyed, they were turned even more to the side, and began a downward turn to flatten out.  She had not seen him angry, but she thought the movement probably continued until his ears were flat, depending on angry he was.  She had no desire to find out though experience.  When he was sad, they were swivel back and forth, as if he were trying to hear something behind him.  When he was surprised, an expression she liked a lot, his ears would turn forward and jump a tad.  But the expression she liked the best, which she’d already come to recognize before he’d talked to her, was when he was pleased.  His ears would swivel to an angle, almost equally to the front and to the side, and the tips would draw in a little.

She got see each of those expressions enough on that night that she knew what they meant.

She’d made him his tea, and then gone to bed in the morning.  There was no way she’d make it through the day without some sleep.  She wasn’t in college anymore.  When she had awoken, half the morning had passed.  Splinter was meditating on his mat next to hers, and sounds from the other room drifted in, of her children talking.  She pulled on her leggings, and walked over to see them in the middle of the room, making…

“Uneven bars?” she asked out loud.

The three of them turned to her, smiles on their faces.  “It’s almost done,” Aries told her.

The sides and bottom were made of regular wood, and PVC pipe was used as the bars.  “There are steel bars inside of them,” Aries explained, “to make them sturdy, and we packed the space with sawdust so the pipe won’t crack.”

“This is amazing!” she cried, her eyes travelling all over the contraption as if it were a priceless statue, not to be seen by mere commoners. 

“Try it,” Aries waved his hand at it, and all three of the kids moved out of the way.

She backed up to give herself a running start, and leapt to the bottom rung.

It didn’t give way as she was expecting, in fact there was precious little give in the thing.  As she turned, and twisted and leapt and lunged, she got the hang of the feel of the PVC piping, of the slight sway of the wood.  It felt more like what she’d actually swing on outside, only there was a strange discordance with the solidity being attached to the uneven bars on which she practiced.

After about two minutes, she flipped off, landing on the concrete floor with a thud, her hands outstretched, and feet pointed in a flourish.  She then dropped her hands to her knees, and tried to get her breath back.

“You’re out of breath already?” Arcos teased. 

“I’m out of shape,” Phoenix said sadly. 

“That’s pretty sad, Mama,” Aries said, shaking his head slowly.  “How are you going to defend yourself against the roaches down here?”

“With your head,” she said in between breaths.

***

Splinter looked around him and saw the path in the lands adjacent to his home, a lane of cherry trees, in full blossom.  Tang Shen was at his side, in a pale blue sun dress, and in her arms was Miwa.  The beautiful baby was dressed in pink, her black hair curling around her ears and forehead.  Tang Shen smiled and handed him their daughter.

He held her high, her chubby baby body framed by pale pink cherry blossoms.  His hands holding her were the hands of a man, five fingered, strong and wide, capable of holding up his family for whatever came their way.

Then, as he watched, his hands holding his precious Miwa, his Harmony, began to change.  His fingers thinned and elongated, his pinky disappearing, the rest of his fingers growing claws, white and pointed.  His hands, once a sun-kissed bronzed, became an unnatural pink, like the inside of someone’s lip.  The baby he was holding, she too, began to twist and change.  Her face grew at an unnatural rate, until it was the face of Karai, her eyes marred with red and black tattoos, her ears punched full of holes.  He could no longer hold her up, and had to lower her to the ground.  She hissed, and her body changed again, turning a repulsive opalescent white, her body stretching and contorting, her face lengthening and widening, fangs growing from her mouth.  She wrapped her body around him, he could feel her touching him all over except for his shoulders and feet.  She began to squeeze, and placed her head above him.

“Daughter!” he cried.

“Father?” he heard the snake say, in a gravelly voice he did not recognize.

He awoke with a gasp, sitting up.  He was shaking, his fur was damp with sweat, and Phoenix was at his side, also awake, her hand on his forehead.  He felt the warmth, now familiar, begin to grow in her palms, felt a wave of worry come from her, and slapped her hand away.

She looked at him surprised.  “You were having a nightmare,” she said.

“I know,” he said curtly, tired of being told what he already knew.

She put her hands in her lap, and with a sympathetic look on her face, asked, “Would you like me to make you some tea?”

“No,” again, his voice terse.  “I would like you to leave me in peace.”

He did not wait to see how she reacted, he turned from her and lay back down, ending any further interaction.  He heard her let out a long, low breath, before settling herself back down on her own mat.

He scolded himself for opening up to her that night, for telling her about his boys, for allowing that question, that had been so heavy and tiring to hold, to lift and give him a little relief.  He did not need relief, certainly not relief offered by this woman.  But he had accepted it, and once it was given, he drank it like a man dying of thirst.  She had sat enraptured, her eyes roaming his face, and eventually travelling at intervals from his eyes to his ears and back again.  Her entire expression spoke of understanding, spoke of the same relief that a heaviness had been lifted, she, too, no longer had to hold it up.  She said all the right things, in all the right places.  Her face constantly changing depending on what he said, no trace of even an attempt to hold back what she might be feeling.  He had drank that in too, the rapt attention of someone who was not required to give it, someone who was a not a child who could be easily beguiled by things that s/he did not understand.  This little golden thing that had sat across from him, who absorbed everything he said, who was astute beyond anyone he had known long before he was mutated, had sat across from him half the night and listened.

Like a fool, he had chittered on like the rat he was.

As if she could read his mind, she’d made him tea and left it to warm.  He had enjoyed it.  He had enjoyed the gesture.  He had enjoyed the familiarity it brought.  He had enjoyed the tea itself, she had figured out how to make it just as he liked it.  As dawn lit the room through the skylight, the sun burned away the spell that she’d wrought.  As she slept the morning away, horror at what he’d done had engulfed him.

It seemed that by speaking about his sons, he’d opened a spot for his daughter to creep in.  He had thought of her, as he always thought of her, but his fear for her was not the desperation that clutched him when he thought about his sons.  Thoughts of Miwa were worry, worry if the mindless snake that roamed New York City still did so.  Was she alive?  If she was, was she safe?  Was she conscious enough to be happy or unhappy?  Now, she bubbled up into his subconscious thoughts, the worry changing to fear, a secret he held close to his heart that his hosts did not, could not, know.  She was his, even if she was forever lost to him, and his alone.

That morning, there was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there since he’d come to.  Phoenix did not seem angry with him, but she was wary.  Her tone was no longer as familiar, the courteous tone was back, a doctor dealing with her patient.

“I think it is safe to take your stitches out now,” she said.  “May I remove them?”

He didn’t trust himself to speak civilly, so he “Hmmm”d in affirmative.

She giggled and her eyes shone happily.

He wanted to pounce on her and claw the giggle from her throat.  She was unrestrained.  She was irresponsible with a powerful gift that many would give dearly to have.  She was too compassionate, the foolish woman had taken an enemy into her home, with no way to defend herself against him, and nursed him back to health.  She was everything he had been taught was weak.  She was everything he was taught was immature.  She was everything he had been taught would lead to one’s downfall, a mixture of extremes in a world that crushed extremes whenever it could.  She was everything that he tried to school in his sons to nurture wisdom within them.  And despite all that, this infuriating creature, with five fingers and five toes, with no trace of an animal inside of her, had wisdom.  That made her all the more a fool, for she had it and chose not to rein herself in.

With a tiny pair of scissors and a set of tweezers, she cut each of his stitches, and removed them.  She was extraordinarily gentle, just as she had been whenever she tended to his wounds.  She had started to remove his yukata at his shoulder, and he quickly pushed her hand away.  A hurt look cross her face, but was gone in a moment.  He pulled the shoulder down himself.  He felt no pain, only the very slight tugging on his skin as the stitch was removed.  She began at his ribs, the awkwardness that arose from his first day awake back again.  She then went to his shoulder, her face too close to his.  He could feel her breath on his neck, the smell of her filled his nostrils, and the feeling of her fingers on his skin made it twitch.  Once she was finished, he felt the familiar heat coming from her hands, he felt the room tip sideways slightly, and it seemed as if her hands were sinking into his shoulder.  Sensations that did not belong to him wove their way through his shoulder into his consciousness; hurt, concern, enjoyment, longing, loneliness, desire, and then gratefulness at the bottom.

A wrath erupted in him, a wrath he only felt recently when he confronted Oroku Saki.  Being hunted down was better than being tortured like this, a slow, steady decent in his own anger and bitterness, things he was sure he had gotten past.   How dare she be grateful for anything?   She was filled recklessness.  It was luck that she had anything to be grateful for, her thoughtlessness would erase all she had in a heartbeat.    How dare she desire?  The desire was for a person.  His own desires were to be tamed, or muted, or eliminated, he had no way of indulging in any.  The object of his desire was dead, gone forever.  She had no right to indulge in any, any more than he did.  He knew that it was not an honorable thing for him to do.  He knew it was not a responsible thing to do.  He knew it was not a kind things to do.  He did it anyway, and he did it filled with anger and a yearning to hurt.

He stretched his consciousness to meet the warm tingle coming from his shoulder.  He felt her presence there, a palpable press against him.  He pushed passed it, a tendril of his consciousness moving through the non-existent barrier between she and him.  A rush of impressions hit him, the feelings he’d perceived before being only ghosts compared to what he sensed now.  Wave after wave of emotion, emotions that didn’t belong to him, hit him; hurt at his rejection, concern that he was in both emotional and physical pain, enjoyment at his rumble of a response,  longing for a connection, loneliness at the lack of one, desire for arms around her and a body against hers, and gratefulness for his presence.

She gasped loudly and snatched her hand away from him.  Her eyes were wide, and the look on her face aghast.  “I’m sorry!” she cried in a plaintive voice.  “I did something wrong, I’m sorry!”

He blinked at her in shock.

“Did I hurt you?” her voice was desperate.

He shook his head no, unable to answer.

“I think we can be done,” she said quickly, picking up the serving dish she used as her medical tray.

As she walked away, he felt his throat closing in fear.  The sound of his blood rushing in his ears, _bu-buh, bu-buh,_ beat in his head.  His breath came in gasps, he couldn’t any air in his lungs.  The impressions he’d felt were full force, an amplitude that he had only felt in the extremes of his life, even as a child.  Was this the way she always felt?  How did she function? Did she feel all her emotions at such enormity?  Even at the bottom of layers, the ones closest to her heart and farthest from her conscious mind, were tidal waves that threatened to sweep him away.

Just slightly more conscious than the gratefulness she felt at his company, an appreciativeness at his presence that he didn’t understand was something he did understand.  He understood it well, for he had experienced it daily for years.  Desire was no stranger to him.  Desire in his body, desire in his mind, desire in his heart.  It was easily identifiable, and with the ardor she felt it, there was no mistaking it.

Her desire was for him.

***

She pulled his stitches out of his skin without words, they didn’t seem necessary.  The curtain which had been pulled aside, the heaviness that they had set down only a few nights before, was now back, slammed in place when he had slapped her hand away from him in the night.  It had stung her fingers, he had a hard slap, but it hurt less than his words.  “I would like you to leave me in peace,” he had said.   It was a clear statement, and so she had done as he wished.  She went about her work as if it were just that, work.  He had healed wonderfully, the scars on his skin would be very thin, and not noticeable at all once his fur had grown back fully in those areas.  As she took the stitches out of his shoulder, she could smell him, the smell of musk and grapes.   The smell used to bring fear into her heart, used to give her nightmares of Tacitus, but now it was _his_ smell.  _Safe_ , the unbidden thought told her, and she promised she would keep him safe.  He made her feel she was capable of keeping him safe.  It was a silly oxymoron, but as with many thoughts, the equation fit in her mind.  

When she was finished taking out his stiches, she felt the golden ants gathering in her palms.  She sent them, like a queen ant commanding her army of daughters, into his body, to do their work to heal whatever hurts they could.

His voice boomed in her mind, like it did many years ago, coming close with a sucking noise, and speaking directly into her ear, so she could hear nothing else.  She jerked her hand off of him, fear filling her as soon as she let him go.  That had never happened to her, she had done something wrong.  She’d done something wrong, and she didn’t even know what it was she’d done or how she’d done it.  But the look on his face spoke volumes, a face that rarely bespoke of anything.  He looked like he’d seen a massacre, that he’d felt something awful, and she’d been the cause of it.  He hadn’t even answered her when she asked if he was hurt.

She took her medical equipment away, fighting tears at her mistake.  His voice still rang in her head, with two words that she didn’t know the meaning of, but were as clear as if she had thought them herself.

_Tang Shen._

 


	63. Chapter 63

Once the even bars were finished, the Phoenix abandoned her morning Sun Salutations and evening Moon Salutations for a different routine, one that was obviously meant to stretch her for an athletic exercise.  She still did it slowly, counting three breaths between each asana, and it still drove her crazy that it went so slow.  She would often wish, with a touch of bitterness, that she was in her late teens/early twenties again where such stretching was only to appease her coach, not a necessity in order to be able to work with the uneven bars.

She was able to allay much of the tedium of being stuck down in the sewer by using the bars, going through as many routines that she could remember from her youth to gain more stamina.  She berated herself several times a day for letting herself go the way she had.  She had Aries make her several targets so she could begin target practice again.  He had also carved her a set of beautiful sticks to keep her hair back, and Arcos stained them with different colors to give them a punch.  Both boys seemed thrilled that she used the uneven bars as much as she did, and that she asked for a target, to the point that Aries made her a balance beam and each time they went to the surface, they brought at least one grocery bag full of bullet casings.   She crocheted another, larger basket, to house them all, out of plarn, and complained bitterly at being made old before her time.

“We can start to find you yarn, Mama,” Arcos said, “and you can crochet us all sweaters for the winter.”

She gave him a nasty look.

“I could make knitting needles easier than I can crochet hooks,” Aries joined in, “I am sure you can learn how to knit, if you’d prefer.”

She gave him a nastier look.

“Oh, we can sheer me and you can learn to spin wool!”  Aries snortled holding in a laugh.

She gave him a death look.

“You can learn anything you put your mind to, Mama,” Aries sang.

She threw a bullet casing at him.

He laughed and danced out of the way.

“Your aim is getting bad, Mama,” Medusa teased.  “Better go use those targets.”

She let out a frustrated grunt, and went to do just that.

She found an irritation growing inside of her, and she didn’t want to examine where it might be coming from.  But, when the quiet of the night carried only the sound of dripping water, and the breathing of the others around her, it was hard to keep her mind off of it. 

Practicing in a more structured way made the warrior aspect of their existence creep its way back into her thinking.  Playing Nurse, deep in The Burrow, going above ground to gather supplies, had made her forget the severity of their situation.  Her aim was nowhere near as good as it once was, her stamina was greatly lessened, and her attitude was just down right poor.  Apparently, denial is a well working psychological tool for you, she told herself.  I thought you were much more mature than that.

Pretending that they were not soldiers, that they were only relocating, that they could survive down here forever, just as they did at the warehouse those first nine years before Chategris came into their lives, had worked until the wall that she had carefully chipped between her and the rat mutant had been raised again.  She had done something horribly wrong while trying to help him heal, and he had closed off completely.  He was as still and silent as he’d been when he’d first woken up.

It brought into sharp relief that he was her enemy.  He was aligned with the Kraang, or with the Rat King, or both, it was only the how that she didn’t understand.   But then, she thought, does it matter that I don’t know how?  Doesn’t it only matter that it is?

 _Safe_ , the unbidden thought said.

She was wiping tears from her eyes more often than she had been.  She would feel a wave of hopelessness, that none of them would ever be safe again, and then the unbidden thought would hold her in its arms, just as the fiery bird held her in its wings in her dreams, and the feeling of safety would return to her, causing the tears of hopelessness to turn to tears of relief, both of which overflowed from her eyes. 

What did I do wrong? she asked the unbidden thought, while she warmed up on the uneven bars. 

 _Safe_ , was all it said.

But it obviously wasn’t safe, she argued, reaching to grab the higher bar, I’ve ruined all the headway I made.

 _Safe_.

I will still keep him safe, she promised.

She had not used her ‘magic’ on any of them since her mishap with Splinter.  Her care was solely herbal based, and she felt a slight relief at it, that she wasn’t quite as responsible for the result now.  But she missed the feeling of the ants gathering in her palms, the calm and peacefulness that it gave her while she did it. 

Now that she was not administering it Splinter, she had no reason to touch him, and sometimes the ache of not doing so also caused tears to spill.  She hadn’t wanted to touch someone like this since the children were tiny, and she still craved the touch of skin and not fur.  She could remember relishing in touching her patients, back then only the homeless population they met by accident, because they had skin, their hands were unobstructed by hair or scales.   Now, at night, she could feel the heat from his body next to her on his mat, but when he had a nightmare she dare not put her hand on him again.  She didn’t know if she could hold her tears back long enough to be able turn from him if he told her to leave him be once more. 

She thought several times of moving to sleep with her children at night, as they use to during the cold in the winters, and they had when they were all younger and in love each other, and not at each other’s throats with anxiety.  She did not want to leave the rat mutant’s warmth, she didn’t want to not smell him the only time of day that she could.  She wasn’t ready to leave his side yet, even though it was increasingly become apparent to her that he was ready for her to do so.

Doing her courses on the uneven bar or on the balance beam kept these thoughts at bay.  She couldn’t dwell on anything except what she was doing, and it was the only time she could garner any relief from what seemed like a darkening window that she couldn’t figure out how to relight.   Her body would hurt with over-extension when she was finished, and it just made her feel more heavy when her thoughts came back to haunt her.

How do I fix this?

 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought. 

She didn’t know how keeping him safe would help her fix this rift she’d caused.

She was brought out of her thoughts by the sound of Aries’ clomping feet and Medusa’s voice coming down the tunnel toward the large room where she was practicing on the uneven bars.

“Did it ever cross your mind that maybe the rest of us want you to go away?” the snake hissed, emerging into the light and making a beeline to the smaller room.

“It isn’t my fault that you’ve lost your best friend,” Aries’ crooned the words with a derisive tone, immediately behind her tail.

Phoenix followed them into the little room, where Arcos was sitting cross-legged drawing something in his sketchbook and Splinter was sitting cross-legged in what she assumed was the position in which he’d been meditating before being interrupted by her two children.

“It isn’t my fault you’ve lost your stress release because you can’t screw someone!” Medusa’s voice was deadly.

Arcos let out a gasp, and Phoenix bolted over to the children’s mat where the two of them had ended up.  Before Aries could reply to his sister, his mother had grabbed his ear with a single movement, twisting it and pulling it so that he let out a cry and had to put his head down to lessen the pain.  Medusa was not left alone, her other hand struck out and hooked the side of her mouth, scraping her knuckles across one of her daughter’s fangs.  She also let out an exclamation of pain and tried to pull away, only to have her yanked back to her mother’s side by the cheek.  The exclamation turned into a yell, and tears began to fall from her eyes.

Something broke inside of her, the tension that had been building over the little more than two months of them being down in the sewer gushed out of her heart and into her body.  Phoenix got in her daughter’s face, the same distance as if she were going to kiss her.  “Watch your language!” she thundered.  “What he does for stress release is none of your business!”

Without letting go of his sister, she turned to Aries, her nose almost touching his.  “If you didn’t want people saying anything about what you do in the bedroom,” she roared, “then maybe you should keep it in your pants!”

She dragged both of them, one by the ear, the other by the cheek, to the door of the little room, and flung them physically out of it.  “You are going shopping,” she put her hands in fists at her sides.  “You are going to get me three dozen pigeon eggs, three notebooks, three sketchbooks, five pencils, a proper pencil sharpener,” she chattered off whatever came to her mind, “black tea, creamer, and sweetener!”

The two children were backing away from her.  “She started it!” Aries pointed at his sister.

“And a tea pot!” she added to the list.  “And some hair bands!”

“Mama—“ Aries tried.

“And you’re going to forage some garlic!  And some dandelion root!”

“Shut up, Aries!” Medusa cried.

There was an uncomfortable silence as Aries’ obeyed his sister.

Arcos snarffled.

Phoenix turned on her other son, her face an ugly shade of red.  It made the scars on her temples look a livid white in a caricature of a Frankenstein monster.  “You think that’s funny?” her voice was quiet.

The smile immediately vanished from his face, replaced by fear.  “No,” he said quietly.

She swooped down on him, bringing her fist down on the top of his head in between his ears.  She then grabbed one of them with the same motion she had with Aries, “You can go with them,” she hissed, dragging him to the sliding double doors and throwing him out.  “And get a cookbook on different ways to cook rice!  I am tired of it plain with eggs!”

“Hey Aries,” Arcos called down the tunnel.  “Mama says you’re to get yourself a wooden spoon.”

“What?!” Aries voice was farther down the tunnel, but still clear.  “Aww, man!”

“Good going, wool-for-brains!” Medusa’s voice was not as amused as Arcos’.  “Now we’re gone for days and we get a spanking when we get back.”

“A spanking?!” Phoenix bellowed in disbelief.

“Run!” she heard Aries say.

“DID YOU JUST TELL YOUR BROTHER AND SISTER TO RUN?!” her voice echoed over and over and over in the sewers, and was the only answer she received.

She put her hands out in claws, choking the air in front of her and let out a frustrated scream.  Her knuckles were still bleeding from where she’d nicked her skin on Medusa’s tooth.  She licked across the knobs on the back of her hand, cleaning up the blood, and erasing the line that indicated there had ever been a break in the skin.  She then stormed over back to the uneven bars to work her anger away.

 

***

 

When he did not watch his thoughts closely, Splinter was torn between anguish, anger, and regret.  He could keep his mind quiet most of the time, he not much else to do besides practice doing so.  But at times, before he knew it, his mind had rushed down a run of thoughts that plagued him before he could restrain them. 

He worried increasingly about his sons, April and Casey, and his daughter.  He worried about the world above ground, taken over by the Kraang.  He feared of the role The Shredder played in this plan, what reward he had been given for his role, and what he was doing with his compensation.  Even though he didn’t want to, he worried about this family that had taken him in, who seemed to be under an increasing strain. 

He was angry that he was stuck here, when he wasn’t stuck here.  Since Phoenix had not been moving energy to help him heal, he had noticed the fever coming back, followed by chills.  He mediated to heal his own body, but his infection had been much more deeply imbedded in his blood than he’d thought.   Her help was accomplishing more than he surmised.  He could heal himself, he knew, he did not need these people to help him.  He could leave whenever he liked, despite not being fully well.  He was sure that neither she nor the children would stop him leaving if he chose.  But he couldn’t make himself leave.

He regretted giving into his anger and passing her boundaries the night she’d tried to comfort him.  She had completely retreated after the intrusion.  The comfort she gave now was only in carefully chosen words.  She had not touched him since that night, and while he loathed it when she had touched him, he longed for her to touch him again even more.  The feel of a warm and gentle hand stroking him in a loving way, a way only a female could do, had touched him deeper than he’d supposed.  She didn’t even touch him when she thought he was sleeping any longer.  He desperately missed the tender feel of her fingers tracing his ears or caressing his cheek.  It made it worse that he knew the reason behind the soft touch.

He tried to deny it, that he had been mistaken, horribly, horribly mistaken.  It couldn’t be possible. 

She wanted him.

Each time he looked at his hands, looked at his feet, missing fingers and toes, horribly disfigured, he was reminded that he was rat, despite his desperate grip on his humanity.  The Rat King, who could control rats, had controlled him, controlled him like the animals he controlled, because he was an animal.  He was a rat, and had been one for 15 years.

Yet, she wanted him. 

He knew she was not trained well enough to give a false impression, or if she was even aware of what was happening.  She had thought, at the time, it was her fault, though by now she must have figured out the intrusion was on his part.  But it meant that the reaction was a true one.  But he also knew that it couldn’t be possible. 

He had told Donatello to never give up hope, and he laughed at himself now for giving his son such words.  They were true, hope is always present, he told himself.  He had come to terms, he felt, with the fact he would be partnerless for the rest of his life.  He was aware his sons, whom he loved with all of his heart, whom he had put everything inside of him into for the past 15 years, would be partnerless for all of their lives.  April O’Neil, with a kiss on Donnie’s cheek, had cracked that perception, ever so slightly, so that he had told his son to hold out hope.  He had never extended that hope past his one son.

He was brought out of his meditation, which was succeeding in quieting his mind, by Medusa hissing at her brother, and then darting into the room.  Aries was at her heels, a snide remark on his lips, and directly behind him was their mother.  Of course, he thought, they cannot possibly settle an argument on their own.

Her reaction had more than surprised him.  With a practiced motion, obviously done so many times it was now muscle memory, grabbed both of them in a way that obviously caused them pain.  She then physically threw them out.  He was under no illusions that she could possibly have physically dragged them to the door, but they’d gone willingly, if under duress.  She’d then given Arcos the same treatment, sending them away for what Medusa thought would be days.   He hadn’t thought her able of doing such a thing, of chastening them in such a fashion.  All of their movements were well practiced, something that happened many times before to which all knew the steps.  Perhaps she wasn’t as soft on them as he thought, after all.  She had then thrown a temper tantrum, and stormed out of the room

He heard the soft thunk of the uneven bars as she worked on them.

She came back into the room sweating to the point that her shirt was darkened.  Her breath came heavy, and her hair stuck to her hairline.  She looked at him sheepishly, and blushed.  “I am sorry you had to witness that bit of incivility,” she said quietly.

He shook his head, “Teenagers can be trying,” he said. 

She nodded, and sat down across the room from him.  “We are all getting antsy down here,” she said.  “I know that you are, too.”

He did not answer her.

“I don’t have the grip on my temper that you do,” she chuckled derisively.  “And you have a temper.”

He raised his eyebrows, “Oh?”

Her face turned even redder, as if she’d let out a thought she hadn’t meant to.  “You have a good grip on it,” she repeated quickly.  “But your ears,” she pointed to them, “they show when you’re fighting being annoyed.”

There was a moment of silence before she sucked her lips in, and blinked rapidly to keep back tears.  “Like now,” she said.  She stood up, and turned to go back into the other room.

He sat on his mat and watched her go.


	64. Chapter 64

The children came home before bedtime, all smiles. Arcos and Medusa went to their mat, and Aries came up to his mother.  “I got something for you,” he said, with his hands behind his back.

“Is it anything that I sent you out for?” she asked, her face uncertain.

He whipped out a wooden spoon. 

Phoenix laughed, took it from him with a swipe, and bopped him on the head in between his horns.  The tension that had been building up in her due to her conversation, or lack thereof, with Splinter, faded away with the bang of the spoon on her son’s head.  “A wooden spoon?  It’s been ten years since I have any of you a spanking.”

“It’s only been 7 years since you gave Aries a spanking, remember?” Medusa called from across the room.

She gave Aries a hard look, whose eyes were looking and everything except his mother.  “How could I forget?” she asked. 

“We found something else, too,” Aries said, in an obvious attempt to change the subject.  He went into his pocket and pulled out a paperback book, with the cover still on.

She took the book from him and read the title, “Le Petit Prince.”

“In French!” Arcos said proudly.

“It came from a library,” she admonished.

“No one is checking out books from the library, Mama,” Medusa said.  “We can get a whole bunch of them, books in French I mean.  You can read them to us.”

She shook her head, and turned to her daughter.  The smile disappeared from her face when she saw Medusa coiling up on her mat.   “What are you doing?”

Medusa blinked.  “Going to bed.”

“Where are the things I told you to get?”

The three children looked at each other.  “Uh…” Arcos took a deep breath.  “We thought that was the anger talking…”

“It was your mother talking,” she said, “and you haven’t done what I asked you to do.”

They all looked at her.

Aries was the first one to break the silence.  “Aww, man,” he turned around to walk out.

“You don’t even remember what you told us to get,” Medusa muttered.

“You want me to add things to it?”

“No!” all three of them hustled out the door and back topside.

Phoenix looked at the wooden spoon in one hand and the book in the other and laughed again.  She put the spoon and the book on the floor near the wall, and looked over at Splinter with an apologetic smile.

She had noticed, a good deal after the children had gone, that she’d sent all three of off, leaving her alone with Splinter.   Once she realized that, fear rose in her throat, making air difficult to get in her lungs.  She had to even resort to slow circles on the bar to catch her breath.  It meant time alone with him, something she’d never truly had.  It also meant that the awkwardness that had existed at the beginning of their conscious relationship with one another was back, the rules of the game being learned once again.   She had nothing else to concentrate on, with the kids gone. 

She had then immediately said something completely idiotic, so that she spent most of her time in the next room, crying, being too tired to have another go on the uneven bars. 

She wanted to erase her words, spoken before she’d even realized it.  Of course he’d be annoyed at being told he was annoyed.  Who wouldn’t?  A left handed compliment that turned out to be, she thought.

With the children’s return, her spirits had boosted.  They were sweet things, her children.  But they were her children and she’d told them to do something, and she didn’t tell them in jest.  She was ashamed of her loss of control, something that did not happen often, but happened often enough that they knew not to fight with her when it happened.  She was tired of their sniping at each other.   She was tired of their whining.  She was tired, period.  They were wiggling in defiance more and more, perhaps simply because of their constant proximity to each other, perhaps to assert what they saw as their burgeoning authority.  With the severity of their living situation at an all time high, despite the respite in fighting they’d enjoyed, she needed them to obey her.  That meant they needed to follow her instructions, and so she sent them out again.

She went to the hot water, “I will get you your medicine,” she told Splinter without looking at him.  “It looks like you won’t have to take this very much longer.”

He grunted, and she smiled broadly, trying not to giggle, even with the sadness at having made the previous statement.

She cleaned herself and then settled down on her mat next to him.  She was tired from her cry, her eyes felt the great need to close, and she knew it would not take her long to fall asleep.  It never did when she cried, the attempt at the wet catharsis exhausting her.

 

***

 

He had been very surprised that she’d sent her children back out.  He had fully expected a capitulation on her part, with the offering of the book and the wooden spoon.  The children had obviously thought so also.  He noticed that when one of them was truly upset, the offending party tended to bring a small trinket back home with them after going above ground.  Many times it was given in jest, such as the wooden spoon, but with the gift, all seemed to be forgiven.  So that she had sent them back out, for what promised to be a long trip, had, indeed, surprised him.

She brought him his mug with the awful stuff she had been giving him.  She placed the mug in front of him, not giving it to him directly, and smiled.  “Drink up,” she said softly.  She then gathered a bowl of water, soap, a cloth, and the little bottle of scented oil and retreated behind the curtain.

This was a routine she normally performed in the morning.  He suspected with her extended course on the bars, she felt she needed a full cleaning before bed.   As he drank the foul tasting stuff she’d given him, made no better by the honey that sweetened it, he closed his eyes and tried to block out the sounds that came from behind the curtain.  The tightness which had originated in his chest when he’d first heard it, had slowly lowered in his body over the many days, so that now it griped his lower abdomen in a way that nothing had for a long time.  The sensation was highly uncomfortable, a feeling that was more disturbing that it actually being in his chest.  There, he could associate it with fear, with pain at the loss of his memory.  Contracting just below his belly button was a more guttural feeling, and he did not want it to creep any lower.

She emerged, sans corset and leggings, like each night, and laid out her mat next to his.  “I’m going to sleep now.  Do you need more light than the two candles?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” he said, looking at her eyes in the low light.  “They are enough.”

She smiled at him again, and lay her head on her arm.  “Good night, Splinter,” she said. 

She began breathing steady and shallow in little time at all, the fastest he had known her to fall asleep.

He’d heard her crying softly in the other room, attempting to muffle the noise with something.  He had waffled between anger and regret, but neither feeling could bring him to get up and go after her.  He felt heat rising in his body, the coming on of a fever, and was able to find relief by concentrating on getting it to go down.

The tea she’d given him would lower it for a time, he knew from experience, so he settled himself down to sleep while he could. 

The next morning she did not have her normal beauty routine, but her nightly one, in full view.  He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see her soft stroking her face, a gently movement that made his throat tighten.  The sound was bad enough, the soft _whaaahhh-whhhaaaahhh---wwwwhhhhaaaahhhh_ accompanied by the smell of the oil she used.    She made them tea, and watched him drink his with the same fond way she always did.  She made his tea perfect, the right strength, the right temperature…

He brought his attention to his ears.  She had said she could tell he was annoyed or angry by looking at his ears.  He hadn’t even considered his ears, except when he had become first mutated, and was getting to know his new body.  He could move them consciously, and did so when he was trying to hear something in a certain direction.  Apparently, unbeknownst to him, he did it unconsciously also.

He found, as he sipped his tea, that his ears were straight up, stretched a little, and turned forward.  What had she decided that meant?

Throughout the day, he was mindful of his ears.  He was mindful during sitting practice.  He was mindful during moving practice.  He was mindful when he was thinking.   He became distinctly mindful that his ears were always moving!  And they moved according to his mood.  It explained why her eyes so often flitted between his eyes and his ears.  It unnerved him that she had ascertained this was how he expressed himself, when he, himself, hadn’t ascertained it to that extent.  It unnerved him more that she had decoded what the expressions meant, despite that fact she did not have a sample from which to draw her conclusions.

She was very perceptive.  By listening to her poetry, one could tell she was perceptive.  She had a game she played, where she wrote a poem, read it, and then asked the children what the name of it was.  She was often so detailed, that the names were obvious when the children suggested them, and then more obvious when she told them the actual title.

“Listen to this,” she instructed them after a session with her notebook. 

“Fluttering on the ground,

Red,

Brown,

Green,

Shades of blue,

With a rustle in the wind,

With a crunch underfoot,

I am surrounded

By the crisp,

hard sound.”

She smiled coyly.  “What is it?”

All three of the kids immediately suggested titles.  “Fall!  Leaves!  Autumn!”

She shook her head at each one.  “Plastic grocery bags!”

A chorus of “Awwwwws,” and eye rolls followed.

After having done his morning meditation, he saw she was sitting in the middle of the room, where the table blanket was usually placed.  She was making a line of plarn.  She would get tired of it, and then crochet what she had into what looked like would be a large square.  She would run out of the plarn, and began to add to the end where she ran out.  He watched her work.  She wasn’t graceful, she wasn’t clumsy, by any means, but she garnered no admiration from her movement.  He realized he hadn’t seen her move, not really.  He hadn’t watched her doing her salutations in the morning and evening, he hadn’t watched her on the uneven bars.  He had figured she was prefer privacy, especially since the children did not seem to make an effort to watch her.  He has seen her briefly, but not watched her.  He wondered how she moved when she worked courses on the bars or the balance beam or when she practiced her targets.  Was she graceful then?  Did grace not infer from one thing to another, that her movements here would be graceful too?

She looked up at him, obviously sensing his gaze, and smiled at him shyly.  His heart wrenched at the gesture, it was exactly as it was when he’d first woken up.

He stood up and walked over to her, and sat down across from her and the plethora of plastic bags on the floor.  She stopped what she was doing and watched him as he reached for the scissors and began to cut the bags as he’d seen them do it. 

Her smiled broadened at the gesture.  “Thank you,” she said.

He nodded.  Keeping his eyes on his task, cutting the bags in to loops, he said, “You said yesterday I have a temper.”

She was quiet, and took a deep breath.  “I did.”

“I have not been told that since I was a child,” he told her, looking up.

She was looking at him surreptitiously, her eyes going from her crochet hook to his ears.  Her face was flushed a rosy pink, and she bit her lip.  She looked like had a distinct response in her head to his statement, but didn’t say it.

He waited.

“I wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black,” she said quietly.  “Well--I mean--I did, but I didn’t mean to—“ she shook her head, keeping it down.  “I mean it as a compliment.”  She looked up, her face looking lost.  “I meant it that I have a temper and you have a much better handle on yours.”

He let a silence hang in the air between them for more than a several moments, while they looked at each other.  “I see you have a temper,” he said finally.

Her rosy cheeks turned mauve.  “Sorry about that,” she muttered, sounding very much like a child apologizing to a parent. 

“There is no reason to be sorry to me,” he looked down, continuing his cutting.  “I am not the one who was the target of the display.”

She was quiet, and he heard her breathing in hard, as if she were trying to keep from crying.

His harsh heart gave out, and he threw her a life preserver.  “You must have been quite a handful as a child,” he ventured. 

“You’ve figured out quite a bit about me, too,” her voice was still hushed. 

If he had not been able to figure that little tidbit out sooner, he would have had no trouble guessing it after his intrusion into her feelings.  Everything that hit him was like a hammer, almost palpable.  If her sensations were that passionate to her, her having a temper was an easy presumption.  Her display the night before merely confirmed it.  “I have had just as much time to watch you as you have had to watch me.”  He could sense her looking up at him, he heard the crochet hook stop momentarily. 

“You see a great deal,” she ventured, her voice almost a whisper.

He looked up and locked eyes with her.  “So do you.”

“Not enough,” she admitted.  Her eyes were filled with tears, and she was only half blinking to keep them from spilling.

He wanted to tell her to blink, to reach over and wipe the two tears that would drip down her cheeks with his fingers, the way he did with his sons when they were little, and still cried, when he was still Father and not yet Sensei.  “I imagine there are many who would say too much.”

She chuckled, and looked back down at the square she was crocheting.  “I was going to tell you that I bet you were a handful when you were little,” she said.  “Your calm is very practiced.”  She looked up again.  “You’ve mastered it well.  Someone who is naturally calm doesn’t…they aren’t as good at it as you are.”

He smiled a little, and her entire face lit up, as if she’d accomplished an impossible task.  “So my calm is more unnatural than someone who would be naturally calm?”

The light faded from her face, and was replaced by a rosy glow again, “No!” she shook her head, her hair shaking slightly, “I mean—I meant—I—“ she stopped and narrowed her eyes.  “You’re joking,” she realized.

“Am I not allowed to joke?” he asked, beginning to twist the plastic loops together to make the plarn. 

Her smile grew, and then she bit her bottom lip.  “I like it when you joke.”

He didn’t answer, and found a perverted pleasure in the discomfiture it gave her.

She held out in the quiet for a longer than he thought she would.  It was not a comfortable quiet, the kind that good friends, or those who know each other well can have with each other and let be.  It was filled with an emotional static,  buzzing between them and surrounding any area they both took up.  “Are you comfortable?”  she asked in a rush.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked again.  “Here?  With us?”

He didn’t answer right away, the same tainted satisfaction permeating the air about him, something akin to the feel of power, but not quite.  He schooled himself, it was an immature feeling, as was the anger that slowly inching its way into his heart.  It was not her fault that he was relishing the feeling of the upper hand, and it was not her fault that he was angry at himself for feeling it.  He took several breaths, breaths that were no different than any other breath he might release, but he concentrated on it, and the emotions retreated, leaving only the stillness that he worked so hard for.  “I have no reason to complain,” he said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.  There was no anger in her voice, it was simply a statement, in the same vein as “The sky is blue.”  Her eyes were soft, and she smiling slightly.

He felt the same pleasure he’d felt this morning, while drinking his tea, while watching her face light up.  “Yes,” he admitted.  “You make it very comfortable here.”

She blushed, and he noticed that this blush was more of a carnation pink color, not the rose or mauve of her other blushes.  This was a blush that had a different emotion behind it than her other two.  “I am glad,” she said, going back to crocheting the square.

 


	65. Chapter 65

Splinter drank down the nasty tea that Phoenix had fixed him before bed each night.  “This will be the last time you have to take it, I think,” she tried to assure him.  “I know it tastes awful.  Usually I make a tincture of it, but I don’t have any alcohol.”

That was first time she’d said that, probably because he wouldn’t be taking it any longer.

He felt a different kind of awkwardness on this second night, when she emerged from behind the curtain in just her long, tunic-length blue shirt.  Settling down next to him, she covered herself up, and smiled at him warmly, longer than she usually did. 

“You are a man of routines,” she said.  “What is your routine at night?”

“You see my routine at night,” he spread his hands. 

She chuckled.  “No, I mean, at home.”  There was a moment of quiet before she added, “Your home.”

He saw that she was trying to smudge away the heavy space that lay sandwiched them again.  The repertoire they had enjoyed throughout the second half of the day felt good.  It felt better than anything had for a long, long time.  Then she had made them dinner, (eggs and rice, again), left him alone in the big room to do his evening practice, and had his green tea waiting for him when he was done.  And the tea as perfect.

Fear niggled at the back of his mind, and the photo he had left in The Lair, of he, and Tang Shen, and baby Miwa came to his mind.  “It is much as it is here,” he replied, “only in a different place.”

She nodded understandingly.  “What part do your sons play in the routine?” she asked.

Of course she would ask a question like that.  She had precious little that did not include her children.  Their nightly routine, which he now had memorized from beginning to end, involved all four of them, intertwined in a dance that she orchestrated.  “They are not a part of it,” he said.  “They have their own routines.”

She looked surprised, but it went away quickly, clouded by a look of anxiety.  That too, drifted off of her face in a moment, and was replaced by the soft smile she seemed to reserve just for him.   She looked at him that way for a long while, her held tilted as if she were listening to something far away.   He knew she couldn’t be, he couldn’t hear anything.  She then her eyes blinked slowly, instituting the next part of her own routine, established since his awakening.   “Goodnight, Splinter,” she said.

He lay down next to her on his own mat, “Good night, Phoenix,” he replied.   His body was becoming hotter and hotter under the blanket as lay there, and he cursed at the fever that was slowly rising.  He concentrated on his breathing until the tea went to work, and then fell into a fitful sleep…

He heard a skittering sound, somewhere just beyond his ears, and then a smooth, soothing voice said, “You and I, we are brothers.  Why do you fight that?”

“I am no brother of yours,” he called out into the black and helplessness which surrounded him.

“Your King forgives you past transgressions.  I grant you clemency.”

“I need no clemency from you,” he spat.

“You belong with me…”

“You are dead!”

“As long as you live, I will live.”

He gasped and awoke in the candlelit dark, freezing.  He thought at first that his blanket had fallen away from, but he found he was still covered.  He reached out and touched the concrete, his next thought that the temperature in the room had dropped, but it was no colder than it normally was.  He had to begrudgingly admit that it was him.  The fever had passed, and was now replaced by the numbing cold that followed it.  He lay on his back, listening to his breath, so as not to feel the chill.  He had trouble telling if it was caused by his weakened body, or his subconscious mind. 

The Rat King was dead, he had killed him, sent him teetering over the edge of the wall to his death.  He defeated him.  He had defeated him because he was a man.  He was not an animal, bound to a madman by genetics.  He had his own will.  It was only a dream, he told himself, brought on by fighting a fever. 

He did not know how long he lay there, before coming back to reality with the cry, “Oh Splinter!” in his ears.

He realized his teeth were chattering.

Opening his eyes, Phoenix was up, a look of deep worry on his face.   “You’ve had a fever!  Why didn’t you say something?”

It was obvious she did not expect an answer.  She took her own blanket and quickly draped it over him, and ran over to the children’s mat to grab their blankets as well.  She covered him in those, and opened one side.  To his utter astonishment, she crawled underneath them next to him, her face still a mask of anxiety, and pulled the blankets over their heads.

“You’re so cold,” she admonished.  “How long have you been like this?”  Her voice was that motherly one, the one she had used when he was first awake and she was trying to convince him to take a certain course of action that she deemed in his best interest.    She didn’t settle in with her face near his, but at his chest.  “Give me your feet,” she said, reaching down.  She placed his feet in between her calves.  His toes were all that would fit in the space.  She then took his arms, and bent them at his chest, folding them so his hands were under her chin, so they were enveloped between their two bodies.  She threw her arm over his waist, and began to rub his side vigorously.  “You have to say something when—“

“—when I am in pain,” he finished for her amid teeth chatters.  “I am not in pain,” he assured her.

“Big difference,” she said, putting her head down to get a tighter hold on his hands with her chin.  “Try to go to sleep.”

“You heal when you sleep,” he said quietly.

She looked up at him and smiled, “Yes, you do,” she agreed before putting her chin back down.

They said nothing else.  The vigorous rubbing on his side became slower and slower, until her hand stopped, and draped around his waist to his back.  Her breathing became shallow and steady, indicating her falling back to sleep.

He had thought that he had mastered the paradox that the world was, the two things existing the same space at the same time.  Her body against his brought the realization to the forefront of his mind that he hadn’t.   The awkwardness at having her so close was tempered by the relief his body felt at having her touch him again.  It was like eating after having fasted for three days, one’s stomach is churning, almost cramping from hunger, and then a gentle food soothes it, and all is right again.

The position he was in was not a particularly comfortable one, but it was a comforting one.  It was warm where her body was touching his.  The sensation of her skin on his toes from her calves, and on the backs of his hands from her throat was foreign.  It was not the soft scales of his sons, it was not the muscled punch or defense of April, it was not the mighty blow of Oroku Saki.  It was soft, and warm, the skin at her jaw thin.  He could feel her heart beating, slow and steady.  He could feel her breathing, the air going down her throat, her lungs expanding against his arms, pressing her small breasts into them slightly, before exhaling, and the movement in her throat ending with her breath falling into his chest.

Once his teeth had stopped chattering, and his toes and fingers were warm, he gently pulled his feet out from in between her calves.  She didn’t stir.  He wasn’t so lucky when he did the same with his arms.  He expected to extricate himself from her embrace and simply slide off of his mat, leaving her there to finish sleeping the night away.  He eased the bottom arm above his head along the mat, and lifted the top one out from in between them.  He was surprised at the sudden cold on his arms, and then the cold at his waist.  Without opening her eyes, she brought her two arms in the space his left, tucking her hands under her chin.  One of her hands, while moving to her neck, had hooked on the hem of his yukata, and she curled her fingers around it.  She then moved a little closer to him, pressing her arms against his chest, and her shins against his.  She almost burying her nose in his sternum, and wiggled her feet against his legs. 

He froze, looking down at the top of her head.  Her breathing had returned to her normal sleep pattern as soon as her feet stopped squirming.  She hadn’t woken up when he moved, and now that he was lying next to her, his arms extended above him, he seemed unable to move away.  If he tried to pry her fingers from his hem, she would wake up.  If he moved away, and she moved back toward him, she’d wake up.  For some reason, he couldn’t have her waking up.  She woke up all the time, she probably woke up more than him.  She was a light sleeper.   Why was it important that she not wake up now? 

He didn’t know, but he was used to following the promptings of his heart, which had prompted him precious little lately, and did so without question.

He put his arms around her, and laid his chin on her head.  She took a deeper breath, a sleeping sigh, and then went back to her normal breathing.   He hadn’t held anything in his arms like this since his sons were very little, and they came to his bed in the night for comfort.  Tonight the tables had turned, and this little golden thing had climbed into his bed to comfort him, and like his little sons, fallen asleep next to him.

Unlike his sons, she smelled of soap and flowery herbs, and underneath that, woman.  Her body was pressed against the length of his, not just his chest and stomach of a small child.  Her arms, snuggled against his chest, one of her fists curled against his clothing like a baby only accentuated the feel of her warmth against him.  Her breath, warming and then cooling his breastbone, was not the soft breath of a child, but that of a grown woman sleeping against him .

He felt tears come to his eyes.  This woman against him wanted him.  He had deliberately not considered if the feeling was two-sided.  He didn’t want to contemplate what it meant if it was two-sided.  The pain that he felt concerning this woman in his arms, he told himself, was a ghost of the loss of his wife.  He had loved her with all of his being, and he had lost her.  There was no room for anything else except for the little he had left: his four sons.

But the tightness in his chest was too fresh to be caused by the loss of his beloved.  While it had to taint of pain, it did not taste of loss.  He recalled the deep gratitude he felt from her each time Phoenix moved energy about them.  That feeling, along with desire, was no stranger to him.  It was what he cultivated every day of his life.  What he had been taught to cultivate in his heart since before he could remember.   What he worked every day to cultivate in his sons.  It was that trait that made Tang Shen such a beautiful creature.

It was the trait that made this creature beautiful, too.

Despite her rashness, despite her carelessness, despite her feral passion, she was grateful for what she had.  She was grateful for what was given to her.  She was grateful for her children.   She was grateful for their housing.   She was grateful for him.  She was grateful for her life, and Life had gifted her with something that would have driven a lesser person to bitterness.

His teariness left him, and he inhaled the smell of her, and then emptied his mind.

He slept.  He wasn’t sure how long.   He found that he’d wrapped his tail about Phoenix’s legs in his sleep, and used it to press her close to him.  It was almost hot, underneath the mound of blankets she’d heaped over them, and then threw over their heads.  The spot where she had been breathing into his chest was wet with her breath and his sweat. 

He stayed absolutely still, feeling her head under his chin, feeling her temperature radiating from her body, feeling her against him.  Despite her small size, her body was a solid, she probably weighed more than she looked like she did.  Her hair, which he hadn’t felt before, was soft under his hands, but not silky.  He began to stroke it gently, his eyes staring into the dark under the blanket.

He stopped when she felt her feet wiggling.  He gently, but quickly, unwrapped his tail from around her, as her breathing became more irregular, in the process of a slow awakening.  She took a deep breath, and then the gentle movements halted and her breathing stopped altogether.  For a moment, her body became stiff, and he heard her heartbeat begin to pound in her chest.  He felt heat rising in her face, and smiled to himself at the thought of the color her cheeks must now be.  Then she relaxed, let out a slow breath, and moved her head away from his chest in a gesture to look up at him.  He doubted she could see anything, he hardly could, and his eyesight must be a good deal better than her unaltered vision.

“Good morning,” she said gently, but clearly.

“Good morning,” he replied in the same tone of voice.

“I don’t think your fever came back in the night,” she said.

“I do not believe that it did,” he told her.

“Good,” she replied after a moment.

There was a silence, where he held her lightly in his arms, and she lay pressed against him, a pregnant pause where anything could be birthed.  She then moved away from him, lifting the cover from over their heads, and said, “I will make us breakfast.  You haven’t had a chance to do your morning practice.”


	66. Chapter 66

Arcos watched the sky turn a deep orange as he and his brother and sister closed the door to a utility shed they found behind an abandoned apartment building.  At least, they hoped it was abandoned.  Just to be sure, he’d opted for them to stay in the shed, and not the apartment proper.  The night had been full, despite their little to show for it.  The morning was still a chilly time, they could see their breath throughout the night, and the temperature dropped with the coming of the sun, so that their breath was still visible in the daybreak.  Medusa curled into a coil, and put her hand down to sleep the day away.   Aries went to lie down with her, and she loosened her coils to allow him to use her as a mattress, a win/win situation for them both.  Aries did not have to sleep on the cold floor, and Medusa had someone to snuggle with to warm her.  Arcos took the first watch.

Now with the darkness lifted from the building, Arcos looked back at his siblings, both asleep in each other’s arms.  He wanted to join them, both for warmth and for comfort.  Sleep seemed to be the only time they got along nowadays, the only time that they could find any peace between them.  He was tired, and he wanted some peace.

He envied Aries up and down moods.  He was angry when they’d left the first time, and by the time they’d returned, he was happy with his little wooden spoon.  He moved over a roller coaster of emotions, and got over whatever was upsetting him with the same speed that it had upset him in the first place.  It took the bear a long time to get angry, or to get sad, or anxious, but it took him a long time to get over it.

Medusa simply seemed to whine about being cold, and when she wasn’t, she was sparring or sleeping.   He wondered if she felt anything on those times when she was curled up, her inner eye-lid closed, but her outer one’s open, in what he thought was a type of sleep.  She rarely mentioned how she was feeling, besides being physically cold or missing Razz.   He felt a pang of heartache for her.  Razz wasn’t to Medusa as Myra was to Aries.  Razz was her friend.

He had decided that they would make a round of the city, to truly scope things out.  There might be pockets of people or mutants somewhere, rebels fighting the Kraang.  There might be secret places that the Kraang hadn’t found yet, that would be safe refuges if something happened.  It was only a matter of time before something happened.

They could have bought more time in the Burrow if Mama hadn’t brought Splinter in with them.  Arcos felt a twinge of guilt at the thought.  His mother,  obviously, greatly enjoyed the rat’s company, though he hadn’t been able to peg why.  There were a great many things that she seemed to find downright funny, and he wasn’t able to see what they were either.  Whenever he looked to see what it was she was giggling at, he didn’t any difference in the man at all. 

He got the impression that Splinter liked his mother’s company also.  The rat watched her a great deal, his eyes simply following her at her work.  He rarely said anything, and when he did it was short and to the point.  Not like his mother at all, who occasionally became a chatterbox…especially when on a soapbox.  He didn’t like Splinter watching his mother, it was discomforting.  He wasn’t sure why.  He didn’t get the impression that there was anything dangerous about it. Or that there was anything romantic about it.  There were no romantic gestures at all between them, just Phoenix’s seemingly preoccupation with his wellbeing, and therefore her attention was focused on the mutant rat.

He was sure that there was something about him that she wasn’t telling them.  He was sure it had to do with the Rat King, how could it not?  The man was a rat.  It didn’t sit well with him that she still hadn’t divulged that piece of information which he knew he was missing, and when asked directly, she answered the same, “Before I found him, I had never seen or heard of him.”

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like the guy.  The rat was stern, and very quiet, but there wasn’t anything wrong him.  Arcos as sure he would help at whatever task was asked of him, though none had been yet.  He was sure that the man would have made an excellent ally, and maybe even a good friend, if circumstances had been different.  But there circumstances weren’t different.  They were at war with the Kraang.  They were at war with whoever was allied with the Kraang.  That meant they were at war with Splinter and his Turtles.

The bear sighed, and peeked out the window into the sunlit alley.  In the distance, he could hear the ping of bullets and the whiz of laser fire.  His ears kept on their tips for the sound of robotic marching, Kraangdroids on the lookout for anyone who might have escaped them.

 

***

Medusa was awakened at midday by a gentle shake from her brother. 

“I think the warm part of the day is started,” he said.  “When the temperature starts to drop, wake up Aries.”

She nodded and unwound herself from Aries.  He stirred slightly, snorting, and looked up.  “Wha?” he asked sleepily. 

“Go back to sleep,” Medusa said soothingly.  “It’s my watch.”

Both of her brothers lay next to each other, their bodies touching, but not cuddling without Medusa as an intermediary between them.  That had always amused both Ailurosa and Medusa.  “Homophobes,” they used to say.

Still homophobes, Medusa thought to herself.  They shouldn’t be, it isn’t like they don’t enough homosexuals.

The thought took her, of course, to visions of the Grey Cats, those who preferred to bed-partner with people of their own sex, and those that just liked something warm to bed up to.  She only knew of one actual same sex couple within the gang, and they were women.  She wondered if they got the same poor treatment as the homosexual males in the group did.

Thoughts of the Grey Cats brought her to thoughts of Razz, no matter how hard she tried not to think of him.   Not knowing what happened to him was the hardest thing for her.  She had wondered slightly if this was how Crevan had felt when Ailurosa had died, but he knew what happened to her.  He knew she wasn’t coming back.  There had been no evidence of Razz’s death, or even capture.  He could be out in that city anywhere, looking out from where he was hiding, just as she was.  He could be dead, killed by Kraang, or by rebel humans, or by other mutants.  He could be lying on the concrete, with bugs, rats, and seagulls picking at his bones.

She thought of the man in the armor, and the mutants surrounding him, the sun shining behind his back when she and her mother had caught sight of him.  It made her wonder if there were many mutants who were working for the Kraang.

If they were, were they working for the aliens willingly or not?

She shook her head slightly, and sighed.

They’d gone to the library, which wasn’t that far from their Burrow, but found no books on cooking rice.

“Apparently cooking rice is such a simple process, that they don’t need to write books about it,” Arcos said.

“We need a book on how to make sauces,” Medusa suggested.  “That way we can put it over the rice.”

They found several, and taken them.

They had gathered a few pigeon eggs, placed gently in a plastic bag, placed within a plastic bag, placed within another plastic bag, with plastic bags cushioning the bottom.  He was still sure that a few were broken.  Smelling out the distinctive aroma of pigeon, they went from building to building, high above the ground in ledges of high rises, picking a few here and a few there.  There wasn’t a whole lot of eggs being laid at this time of year.  They didn’t want to eliminate a flock by over harvesting.  In a month or so, there would be eggs coming out of the wazoo, but not quite yet.  Consequently, gathering was a long and arduous process.

She poked her head up to the window, the bright sun overhead, and shining into the alley.  The place was deathly silent, like a ghost town.  All it needed was a tumbleweed to blow through.  Flicking her tongue, all she could smell were her brothers, herself, and ozone, tainted with Kraang, coming from the distance.

***

Aires was awoken for third and final watch, as the temperature started to dip at about five in the afternoon.  Medusa and Arcos could get another two or three hours worth of sleep before they headed out into the city.

The Children of the Phoenix had come back home earlier the night before, because all three of them thought that their mother had simply been livid and thrown all three of them out without realizing it.  She had made the rule that none of them be alone, and that Splinter didn’t count.  Her anger at them was usually explosive, but very short lived.  Forgiveness, and forget-ness, were always just around the corner.  And it appeared that forgiveness was, indeed, bestowed quickly.  Forget-ness, however, wasn’t, she’d sent them, all three of them, back out to get the supplies she ordered.

“Shouldn’t one of us stay with her?” Aries asked.  “She’s by herself.”

“She’s with him,” Medusa countered, throwing her head in the direction of their Burrow.

“He doesn’t count.”

“Apparently he does, doesn’t he?” Medusa swaggered as she slithered.  “Because here we are, and there they are.”

“What is your problem?” Aries snapped.

“I don’t have a problem,” she hissed.  “You’re the one who got us in this mess in the first place!”

“Stop it, both of you,” Arcos said, sounding a lot like his mother, even in his own ears.

“Shouldn’t one of us go back to stay with her?” Aries asked again, ignoring Medusa all together.

“Do you want to go back?” Arcos countered.  “She’s still got a mean grip on an ear.”

Aries rubbed his own ear and sighed.

Since it was apparent that none of them were going to risk their mother’s wrath by going back home empty handed, Arcos decided that with all three of them together, it would be a good time to check out the Back-Up Burrow. 

When they were first looking for a place, after slipping down the hatch in the little Burrow room, they’d had a small fight at first about whether to pick something in the subway or something in sewers.

“People are going to come down into the subway,” Medusa had argued, “homeless people live down here all the time!  No one is going to live in the sewer.”

“There is a reason why no one lives in the sewer, snake-breath,” Arcos had growled.

“That’s why we should live in the sewer!”

“I’m tired of living in merde!” Aries cried, his voice sounding very much like a lamb.

“You’re swearing in French again?” Medusa flicked her tongue at him.  “Why don’t you just learn French properly, and speak it?”

“That takes too much work,” her brother said.  “We already know the swear words.”

“You already know all the other words,” Arcos’ gravelly voice was disbelieving.  “You’re just too lazy to speak it.”

He shrugged, his brother half-correct.  Just like his siblings, Aries could understand much more than he could recall from memory.  He could translate from a book pretty well too.  His vocabulary wasn’t fantastic, but he was decent.  At least, he thought so.  Taking the trouble to speak it, when the other person would speak back would be his mother, didn’t seem worth the effort to him.  He’d rather spend the mental effort on other things.

Like their new home, The Back-Up Burrow. 

They’d found a section of the sewer that intersected with the subway system.  At these junctures, they’d discovered that the open spaces were very large, though they had a lot of tunnels running into them.  They’d decided to utilize one of these large open spaces, and use it as they did the floor of the warehouse.  They decided to leave three tunnels open.  To keep the place more private, they took rubble and blocked up two of the entrances, and forced a grate down on another.  The grate was rusted and crusty with who knew what.

“We’ve got so much scraping to do…” Arcos complained.

“I’m not scraping anything for a long time,” Medusa announced.  “You two owe me lots and lots of scraping.”

Both boys grumbled, unable to fight the truth of the matter.

“We’ll make a door for that tunnel,” Aries pointed to the one at the far corner of the space, “and that can be our escape route.”

“Can you put double doors, like at the Burrow now, at the front?”  Medusa asked. 

“That wouldn’t do much good if we have a grate here,” Arcos pointed out.

“Why do we have the grate here?” Medusa had asked.

“For air flow,” Aries said.  “You wanna die of asphyxiation?  Or worse, poisoning from the sewer?”

Medusa clicked her tongue and turned away from him.

On this visit to the Back-Up Burrow, they took stock of their surroundings.  Despite not wanting to scrape, they had to scrape part of it to begin putting things in it.  Medusa had flatly refused to scrape the ceiling, so in the back of the space, the boys had stood on each other’s shoulders and scraped, while Medusa did the floor and walls.  Once a sizable square was made emanating from the corner, they decided they were done with cleaning until they moved in, and that they could store whatever extras they managed to come up with in the clean area.

So far, they had gathered lots of t-shirts, with which to make their sleeping things.  The rats had found the pile at one point, and they’d had to oust them none-to-gently.  They also collected a great many plastic grocery bags.  Plastic bags were easy, they used to carry things, so they were always there.  Aries had already made one large crochet hook.  They had also gathered two large, blue plastic barrels to begin the water purifying system.

“We need to start getting sand at some point,” Aries said.  “We can’t clean water with just barrels.”

They had decided that this trip, instead of sand, they’d gather ordinary living items.  Aries hadn’t been happy with that.  “We’ll get some sand if we find any,” Medusa soothed him.  “It will take loads of trips to get enough anyway.”

That his brother and sister didn’t seem to be as worried about the essentials of living as he did needled him.  He didn’t like the feeling of slight irritation, he’d rather be angry.  At least then he could do something about it.  Being poked by annoyance was one of those things he could do nothing about.

They needed sand for the filters.  They needed mirrors for skylights.  He might even be able to rig electricity into the place, it had lights.  If he could figure out where the wires connected with the power main, and the power main was active.  If not, then they needed a saw that could cut through the metal pipes, and the mirrors to reflect the sunlight.  They needed some sort of security alarm for the front of the Back-Up Burrow, so that they knew when someone, or something, was coming.  His mother needed shelving to put her medical supplies.  She needed the medical supplies, themselves.  They needed a whole new household!

He knew that if they stayed in the sewer (Please don’t let us stay in the sewer, Aries hoped to whatever might be listening), he’d have to rig something for a garden.  Many of her herbs came from what they grew, especially her ‘currency’ with the homeless population.  He chuckled, trading a marijuana substitute for alcohol, go figure.

He took out a CD that he had taken from the library and stuffed in his pocket.  “Dance Club Favorites—2003”.  They had nothing to play it on, but once he rigged something up, his mother would be happy.  He wanted her to be happy again.

As the world darkened, he went to wake up his brother and sister.  The sooner they’d finished with Arcos’ plan, the sooner they could get home.


	67. Chapter 67

Phoenix hadn’t meant to sleep the entire night away.  She was a light sleeper, and when Splinter was truly asleep, he was not.  Her plan, once she realized that she’d jumped into the bed next to him as if he had hypothermia, was to wait until he was truly asleep, and then make her way back to her own mat.

But she’d slept the entire rest of the night through.

Then she’s awoken in his arms, like in a poem.

When she was falling asleep with his arms tucked into her breasts and his toes sandwiched in her legs, her body had viciously betrayed her.  She felt the golden ants gathering in her hands, and for the first time since she’d ever felt them, she let them sting her palms, fighting their way to get out.

 _Safe_ , the unbidden thought said.

I will keep him safe, she promised.

 _Safe_ , it said again.

I won’t use the glow on him, she assured the unbidden thought, her palms burning both on the inside from the glow and the outside from her vigorous rubbing.

The burn of the glow suddenly disappeared, and sleepiness overcame her.  At the same time, as if dreaming, her body revved up, a slow heat gathering in between her legs in a way that hadn’t happened in almost 20 years.  The smell of him, musk and fruit, filled her nostrils, until all that was left in her mind her physical sensations and his smell.  Her body was so sleepy, she had drifted off with little trouble, despite the fact.

Then she’d woken up in his arms, with his body pressed warmly against her.  Her thighs were alongside his, and she could feel the curve in them, that made them an animal’s legs and not a human’s.   It had shocked her, that the warmth she thought she was dreaming was real, that she hadn’t made her way back to her own sleeping mat, but stayed at his side, or more accurately, his front, the entire night.  Once she’d gotten over the shock, she had looked up at him, seeing nothing in the little cocoon of blankets she had unintentionally made, and bid him good morning.  He’d replied, and then were was space.

Just space, but not empty space.  His smell, his warmth, his voice, the sound of his breathing, the feel of his breath on her skin, it all filled the space.  Then it filled her, and she had felt more secure than she had at any other time in her entire life.  She didn’t want to leave that space there, she wanted to stay in it forever.

 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.

I **will** keep him safe, she vowed.

 In order to keep him safe, he had to be healthy, and in order for him to be healthy, he needed to eat and exercise.  It took all of her willpower to push away from him, and get out from under the covers.

She felt her face getting hot thinking about it.  He couldn’t hear him in the other room, and had to fight the desire to go and see if he was still there.  She then heard an occasional skid or scrape, him moving in his dazzling way, doing whatever it was he was practicing.  She hadn’t had the courage yet to ask him about it.  You’re a coward, aren’t you? she scoffed.  What have you had the courage to ask him?

Precious little. 

She wasn’t ready to give up the game they were playing, that she knew they were playing.  If she asked too many questions, if she asked the wrong question, then the illusion would be shattered.  She could feel the smoke and mirrors fading.  Each day of his recovery was a day closer to the game being over, and she was quite positive she would not be the winner.

Later on that day, with her thoughts bouncing from cowardice to her desire for the game to be played for along as possible, she put down the bits of cloth she was sewing together and said, “I can take you to where I found you, if you like.”

Splinter looked up at her, his face unreadable, his ears twitching. 

Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and she wished she could take the words away.  It seemed to her, with that statement, a nail was being placed in the coffin of their play, that reality was now a firm member of the conversation.  She’d invited it in with a silly offer.

 _Trust_ , said the unbidden thought.

A new word, in a new tone, spoke in the quiet of her mind, where the poetry came from.   It sounded magnanimous in a way that she, in the prime of motherhood, never could.  A feeling of sanctuary filled her, wrapped in the arms of fiery wings that would not allow anything to touch her, not for now.  The fear left, chased away before it could be burned.

Yes, she answered.  I trust you.  I have always trusted you.

 _Trust_ , it said again, before she felt it melt away to wherever it is it came from.

“I would like that,” Splinter said, standing up. 

She quickly stood up, too, and headed to the door, where her slingshot and knife lay.  Putting each in their loops along her belt, she deliberately turned, so that she would not have to look at Splinter in the crocheted basket filled with this sharp, little items.  She only had to wait for a moment, before he was at her side, waiting for her to lead them.

Using the crank light to see by, she got to the end of their tunnel, and stretched her hearing out to listen.  She knew which way to turn, but the twists after this first turn were unknown to her.  She had run after the sound of the dripping, following wherever it lead, it didn’t matter where it had been taking her. 

The same song soon reached her ears, melodic and familiar.  The feeling of security that the unbidden thought had given her was still there, keeping her calm, keeping her steps steady.  The song drew her onward, despite the fact that she didn’t want to go this way, she didn’t want to show him.  She just knew it was the right thing to do, and she didn’t think she could live with the guilt of not doing so.

Him still having an intermittent fever gave her courage.  He wouldn’t leave just yet.  He would have left already if he was going to leave while he was sick.  He would stay, she knew, at least until the fever did not come back.  That bought her time, despite coming back to the beginning of this entire thing.  It was not a completed ring by bringing to this place.

She came to the spot where he had lain, and stopped.  “This is where I found you,” she said, turning the crank on the lantern to make the light brighter.

He walked slowly toward the smudges in the dried muck that indicated where he’d been found, and where her children and she had tried to move him.  He examined the floor, his ears twitching back and to the side slightly, indicating he was thinking.  She wished she could go inside his brain and know what it was.

“You found me on your own?” his voice was quiet.

“Yes,” she said, just was soflty.  She indicated the obvious foot prints of her sons, and the slither of her daughter.  “The children followed me when I ran.”

He turned and looked at her.  “You ran?”

She felt her face getting hot, and cursed herself for saying too much.  Just because she was told to trust where the unbidden thought lead her did not mean being stupid.   “Yes.”

“How did you know I was here?”

How could she answer him?  The security in her chest was gone, replaced by a slow clutch of panic.  “I heard you,” she said, feeling ashamed at not being fully honest.

“Your children did not?”

She shook her head.  “No.”

A confused look came on his face, and she wanted to wipe is away with a stroke of her hand.  His face so expressive when he actual used it to express himself.  “How could you have heard me, and your children not?”

The dread that slowly been closing its fingers around her heart seized her, squeezing.  The thought that she would have heard something they hadn’t did not occur to her, had not occurred to her, in her whirl of trying to explain how she’d found him here.  She had trouble catching her breath, and felt muscles in her face move without her permission.  Her eyebrows drew together, her mouth stretched back in fear, and her shoulders came up.  “I heard you,” she said again, not knowing what to say.

The confused look did not leave his face, and his scrutiny did not end with her answer.  After a very long moment, in which Phoenix could not bring herself to move, either her eyes from his gaze or her feet from the ground, he said, “You heard me.”  It was not a question, but a statement.  He said it as if he was trying on the words, seeing how they tasted in his mouth.

Him speaking broke the spell he’d cast over her, fear giving her a push.  “You were on your stomach,” she pointed to the floor where he’d been, “I had to roll you over.”  Pointing toward the opening of the tunnel, she said, “Aries and Arcos carried you back to The Burrow.  I carried your tail.”  She chuckled, in what she hoped was a reassuring manner.  It didn’t reassure her very much.  “Your tail is heavy.”

She saw his tail move, as if it was acknowledging her observation.   Splinter was silent for a few long minutes, looking about the entire place, examining the smudges, as if he could read what had happened in them.  For all Phoenix knew, perhaps he could!  He then turned to her and nodded his head and said, “Thank you for showing me this.”

She felt the fear drain from her, straight out of her toes and into the concrete below her boots, and then into the sewer water where it belonged.  The formal bow with his head that made caused her heart to melt.  She wanted to take his muzzle in her hands, and smile at him.  No, she didn’t want to smile at him.  She wanted to take his muzzle in her hands and kiss him.

She cranked the light again.  “Is there anything else you’d like to see?”  Her voice sounded steadier to her than it had since she’d entered the clearing.

“No, thank you,” he replied.

She turned without looking at him, scared of what he would see in her face if he looked at her too long, and began to walk back to The Burrow.  He was at her side, walking exactly alongside her, his footsteps in perfect time with hers.  The sound of the rhythm of their walking, of the melody in the distance, of the sweetness that had chased away the anxiety, lulled her into calm.

“What does tang shen mean?” she asked.

He stopped abruptly and snapped his head down at her.  “What did you say?”  His deep voice was deeper, and louder than she’d ever heard it before.  Not a yell, yet still a powerful force thrown against her.

Her eyes grew wide, and she took a deep breath and fought taking a step back.  She would not be openly intimidated by anyone.  She schooled her face, and with another deep breath asked again, “What does tang shen mean?”

“How do you know that?” he asked, his voice threatening. 

“I heard it,” she said as calmly as she could muster, willing herself not to lean backward.

His face softened slightly, and he turned his head to side a smidge.  “I have been talking in my sleep?”

Damn, why did he have to keep asking questions that she’d not anticipated the answers for?  Honesty is the best policy, she said to herself.  It had been so long since she’d truly lied, she was sure she’d lost the ability to do it well.  There was no need to lie in her life.  Why start now?

“No,” she told him.  “When you are asleep, you are quite a sleep.  I doubt a hurricane could wake you.”

His visage hardened again, “Then where did you hear that?”

She took a deep breath, and blew it out softly, in the direction of his face in what she hoped was a show of authority.  “When I was…helping to heal you, the last time, with my hands, I did something wrong,” she explained.  “And I heard the words Tang Shen.”

A look of shock came over his face, but was gone so quickly, she wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it.  Then his shoulders slumped slightly, his face showed a look of remorse.  He shook his head, “You did nothing wrong,” his voice was gentle.

His expression tore her insides.  “No, no, no,” she wanted to croon, “don’t look like that.”  Instead, she answered, “I did.  I hurt you somehow.”

He shook his head again.  “No, you did not hurt me.”

“I can tell that I did,” she assured him.

She smiled and shook her own head.  “But you looked hurt, I don’t know that I did wrong, but I know I hurt you.”  She felt sudden tears come to her eyes, and her throat gripped for another reason altogether different from fear.  “Hurting you is the very last thing I would want to do.”  She blinked, and two tears dripped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

For the first time, he reached out and touched her, wiping away one of the tears.  “The transgression was mine,” he said, his eyebrows still drawn together. 

Again, there was a long pregnant pause, a space waiting for something to dawn.  She didn’t say anything to break the silence, she just looked into his beautiful almond shaped amber eyes, and relished the ghost of feeling that his fingers had left on her skin.

“Tang Shen is the name of my wife,” Splinter said.  

 

 


	68. Chapter 68

Phoenix blinked, and a look of surprise flashed on her face, quickly replaced by one of compassion.  “Oh,” she crooned, looking away from him to the floor.

Despite his angry reaction, the little golden thing had stood her ground.  He had seen fear dart behind her eyes, her body reacted in terror, and then it was gone as soon as it had come, her eyes hard, and her breath slow and deliberate.  She had not backed away from him, she hadn’t leaned back, she hadn’t moved.  She had looked him in the eye and repeated her question.

She heard things.  Things she wasn’t supposed to hear.  She had heard him to find him in the sewer when her children, whose hearing he knew was at least a 100 times better than hers, hadn’t.  He had heard the name of his wife, clearly enough that she could repeat it with the correct accent, not the American bastardization of the words.  What else had he she heard?  What else did she know?

He began walking again, and she joined him, at his side, her steps matching his.  “Is she in New York?” she asked.

Obviously, she didn’t know that.  “No,” he answered, his voice shorter than he would have liked.  Guilt had welled up in him at her admission that his intrusion into her being was her own fault.  It had flown over when the tears were shed.  He thought it would engulf him when he wiped one away.  Her cheek was soft, almost silky, warm and pliant.

“Is she in Japan?” Phoenix’s voice was gentle, like she was talking to a scared child.

“She in my family’s grave in Japan, yes,” he managed to calm his voice. 

“Oh,” she crooned again.

He didn’t want her pity.  He didn’t need her pity.  He wanted to be angry.  He wanted to feel that it was her intrusion, that she had heard the most sacred of names in his head.  He wanted this entire thing to be her fault.  And it wasn’t. 

“Did she die before you were mutated?” her voice was delicate. 

“Yes,” he put both of his hands behind his back, making sure he was standing up straight.  He kept his face forward, one of the few defenses he felt he had at the moment.

Bringing him back to the place where she’d found him, to a place in the past, even if it was only two and half months ago, seemed to have opened a tunnel in Phoenix’s mind, a willingness to go back farther than when she’d found him.  His own mind, obviously joining her in that thread of thought, answered her questions honestly, while at the same time wanting to shy away from her knowing anything more than she already did.

She was quiet for a while, he could hear her breathing change.  She was thinking of something she wanted to say, and she was undecided to whether she would say it or not.  The same variation in her breathing had been happening quite a bit in the past few days.  It reminded him of a small child gathering his or her courage to do something they found very frightening.  It hurt him in his gut to think that she was afraid to speak something.  Her words, “Hurting you is the very last thing I would want to do,” rang in his head through the stop in their talking.  She was doing everything in her power not to hurt him, it was apparent to him at every turn.  Yet, she had to build up her nerve to speak to him.  Usually, having that kind of authority did not bother him one iota.  In fact, it was what those whom he spent most of his time felt.  It was what they were supposed to feel.  But he didn’t want Phoenix to feel that way.  He wanted her to speak her mind, even if he did not want to contemplate hearing what it was that came out of her mouth.

“My husband,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, “is not in New York, either.  He went back to Haiti with our children.”

He let the words hang in the air a moment, to hear them again in his brain.  No, he thought, no, I do not want to know this.  But his mouth asked, “Your children?”  

For some reason, he had not considered that she would have a husband, or other children, or any other life besides this one she was living now.  Of course, she would have a history, with a life in full progress before she became the mother of mutants.  Doing the math quickly in his head, he realized she must have been just under thirty before any of this started for her.

She nodded and took a shaky breath.  “We had two.  A boy and girl.”

He wanted to ask why her husband had left, when he had left, was it before all of this?  It wasn’t right of him to ask, despite the fact he thought she probably would have done so, if the questioning was reversed.  It must have been before, he thought, or he would not have been able to take her children to a foreign country without her permission.  She was obviously American, in America, which would mean her children were American citizens.  He said nothing, and walked with his eyes facing ahead of him.

True to form, she was unable to keep the silence going for long when she had no escape route to physically separate herself from him.  With her own eyes in front, she cranked the light again, and said, “I was missing for a long time.”

“Your husband did not look for you?” Splinter asked.

He saw her glance up at him from the corner of his eye.  “I imagine he did,” she replied, her voice a little louder.  “He didn’t have anyone here, all of his family is in Haiti.  He had no reason to stay here.”

“Your family did not help him?”  He wasn’t sure why he asked the question.  It didn’t matter.

“No,” her voice was filled with resignation.  “My family didn’t—“ she cut herself off, catching herself in giving information he realized, she wasn’t ready to divulge. 

He was relieved to know that.  The less he knew, the better.  The less she knew about him, the better.  His thoughts were his own, they belonged to no one else.  If she continued to give him information about herself, they would become his thoughts too, and he didn’t know how many of them he could bear.  It make her too close, like her personal space, which pushed against him constantly, which he had to push against to know she was there, and whose absence made the empty space it left even more empty, was winning in the pushing game.

“No,” she repeated.  Then she chuckled, as if she were trying to lighten the mood, “Arcos says I have a beautiful gravestone just outside of Port-au-Prince.”

He turned to look down at her, to see her smiling as if had just said the punch line to a grand joke.

“I haven’t seen it,” she admitted.  “I don’t want to see it.  I already know I am dead…I don’t want to see the proof of it.”  She looked forward again.

She was dead…the words made him uncomfortable.  She saw herself as not alive, as a ghost that roamed the underbelly of humanity, where even humanity itself did not want to go?

 “Does your family know what happened to you?” she asked.

“I have no family,” he said gravely.  “Only my sons…”

“Then you have a family,” she said.  “You are a father and you have children.  That is a family.”

He nodded, and he saw her smile widen.  “It is a family.”

“The nice thing about families,” she said, “is that you come with them, **and** you can make them.”

He grunted an affirmation.

She giggled again, looking up at him with a shining face as they walked.  She giggled at him a great deal, or tried to hide a laugh.  He was not at all sure what it was she laughing at.  It was never a mean laugh, it was always good-natured, full of enjoyment on her part.  The delight emanated from her, so that he couldn’t help but feel at least a little enjoyment in her laugh itself, even if he was unaware at what it was she found so funny.  “I plan on making mine much bigger,” she said, puffing out her chest.  “I shall be a matriarch of a great family!”  She laughed outright, as if she’d told herself something very funny indeed.

“You are already the matriarch of a great family,” he told her.

“No,” she said, still chuckling.  “I mean a big family.  With all kinds of people in it.”  She spread one of her hands out, to encompass all about her.  “The children will have husbands and wives and they will all come and live with us, and they will have children, and the children will have children, and I will be the Mother of the Children of the Phoenix!”  She gave him a crafty look.  “I am not quite sure where the other children are going to come from yet,” she admitted.

He chuckled, “That might be a problem with your plan.”

“Only a small one,” she batted the air.  “I am sure there is an easy way to solve it.  One simply has to find out what it is.”

“Indeed,” he replied thoughtfully.  He wondered if she was serious or if she was joking.  He was having a difficult time telling.  She said it with such verve, that one would think that she meant every word of it.  But there was no way she could, it was not a possibility.  Truly, it was an impossibility.

 

***

 

Later that evening, she came to him with a shy look in her eyes, holding a thick book in her hands.  “Will you read out loud?” she asked.

He blinked.  Had he heard her right? 

“You have a beautiful voice,” she continued.  “I bet your reading out loud is magnificent.”

She was free with her compliments, he mused.  She had been so since he woke up.  At first, he thought she was being ingratiating, but she did it with her children also.  Listening to the children talk, she did it with everyone, making her criticisms, when she had them, more harsh and hurtful.  He had come to realize that her compliments were, indeed, genuine.  She thought his reading voice would be magnificent?  He’d been given many compliments in his life, but that had never been one of them.

He already knew she valued reading out loud.  She did it every night with her children, and the four of them seemed to look forward to the ritual.  She read things all across the spectrum; natural history, poetry, mythology, psychology, classical literature.  She held the book out to him.  He took the thick tome, and looked at it.

She sank down next to him, her eyes wide and expectant.  Obviously, his taking the book meant he was going to read it.  At least, it appeared to be obvious to her.

“The Illiad of Homer,” he read the title out loud, feeling rather silly.

Her smile broadened.

Surely she wasn’t serious.  She stayed next to him, looking from him to the book and back again.  Apparently, she was serious.  He turned the page, “Book I.”  He hadn’t read out loud since his sons were very little, it certainly was not a ritual in his house as it was in hers.  In fact, once Donatello could read fluently, which was when he was very young, two, three perhaps, Splinter couldn’t remember exactly, he read out loud to his brothers in a way to show off.  Splinter had not stopped him.  He began to read the first lines, and she joined him, their voices saying it together.

“Sing to me, O goddess, of the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades…”

“You have this memorized,” he said affronted.  She’d had him read it out loud, like a parent to a child, and then said with him!  She had gall, but this was downright rude.

“No,” she laughed.  “Only little parts of it.”  She waved to the book.  “That part is the beginning, it is easy to memorize the beginning of something.”  When he said nothing, her agate eyes gazed into his with an intensity that surprised him.  She leaned in and bit her lip, before saying, “Sing to me, O god, of the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus.”  Her voice was velvet and imploring.  “Many a brave soul did he send down to Hades…”  His body clenched in the one place he had been hoping wouldn’t be affected by his stay here with her.

He looked into her eyes for a moment longer, and then turned to the book and began to read out loud.  Concentrating on the unfamiliar cadence of the words helped to keep his mind off of the woman who was still looking at him intently.  Her eyes were on his mouth, watching him speak.  The look on her face was passionate, her lips parted slightly.  Occasionally they would move, saying with him little pieces that she had memorized.

“It was you, goddess, my mother Thetis, who delivered him by calling to Olympos the hundred-handed monster…”

The sound of her voice would bring his attention to the edges of his vision, where he could see her reciting with him.  He had to concentrate all the harder to keep his mind on the words.

“When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Eos, appeared they again set sail for the host of the Achaeans and Apollo sent them a fair wind…”

She said the words, not like a storyteller, but like a supplication, an imploration to the Universe in  prayer.  Her voice sensual and ethereal at the same time, even if the words were neither.

“Apollo struck his lyre, and the Muses lifted up their sweet voices, calling and answering one another.”

She said the names with a strange accent, as if she were familiar with the language in which they originated. 

“So, Zeus, the Olympian Lord of Thunder, hied him to the bed in which he always slept; and when he had got on to it he went to sleep, with Hera of the golden throne in his arms.”

His heart beat hard in his chest whenever she joined in his reading.  It occurred to him, her voice could be a weapon if she chose it to be!

He read until the sunlight became too faint for him to see the words.  When he turned his full attention back on Phoenix, she looked euphoric, as if she’d been given a drug.  Her lips were still parted slightly, her breath short and deep.  He closed the book and handed it back to her. 

“Your voice is exquisite,” she said, in the same voice with which she recited the Illiad.  “I could listen to you read all night.”

By the look on her face, he believed her.


	69. Chapter 69

Arcos put his hand up to stop his brother and sister behind him.  He poked his head around the corner, and then nodded to his siblings.  “They’re over there,” he whispered.

“How many are there?” Aries asked.

“It doesn’t smell like too many,” Medusa said.

Arcos shook his head.  “I don’t see any,” he said.  “But I didn’t see the humans anywhere, either.”

“I can still smell them,” Medusa said.

“Me too,” Arcos replied.

“They’re in the building,” Aries said.  “I can hear them all, they’re underground, in the basement or something.”

“Why aren’t there gunshots?” Medusa asked.  “They must have heard the same scream that we did.”

Arcos looked at his siblings, “This doesn’t feel right.”

“We can’t leave those people trapped in that building,” Aries said.  “I can hear them moving around down there.”

“And they’re fully human,” Medusa said.  “You can smell it better than I can.  They haven’t been mutated into those Kraang zombies yet.”

Arcos twisted his mouth, and then nodded.  “You ready to play with some robots?”

Both Medusa and Aries smiled. 

“Been a long time since we’ve had any toys to play with,” Aries said, taking his axe out from the loops that held in on his back.

Medusa took her whip out, and chuckled.  “You two are awfully slow.”  With that, she darted around the corner in a flash.   The door had already been torn off of the apartment building, and she was in and down the stairs before either of the boys could blink twice.   Entering the basement, she saw a group of nine Kraangdroids standing about, seemingly looking for something.  They all turned their heads at her entrance, hearing her whip crack and taking the head off of one of the droids.

Arcos and Aries joined her, both of them foregoing their usual battle cries for the hope that other aliens were not summoned by their noise. 

Aries used his axe to block a laser beam.  It ricocheted onto the cinderblock of the building, leaving a hole in it.  He swung his axe once the beam had bounced off of him, slicing a Kraang in two at the torso. 

Three Kraang came at Arcos by the time he came down the stairs.  He batted way laser fire like balls with a bat.  In a return stroke, he knocked one of the droids across the basement.  It hit the opposite wall, and the lights in the head went out.  The Kraang in its torso jumped out and skittered away.  One of the droids, now close enough for hand to hand combat, used his gun as a bludgeon, and hit the bear in his upper arm.  It shoved his him sideways, into the third Kraang that was coming at him.  The two of them tangled together, and fell.  The second Kraang thrust his gun at Arcos again, who managed to roll out of the way.  He hit is companion in the chest, causing sparks to fly as the robot suit went offline.  Arcos was able to easily hit it in the back, where it fell on its now dead companion, joining it in wherever it was that Kraang went after they expired.

Medusa had wrapped herself around one of the Kraang, and as she squeezed it into oblivion, she cracked her whip at another one.  It grabbed it by the arm, and she pulled the gun out of its hands.  It then launched itself at her, landing on her at her coils.  It placed its hands around her lower neck, above her chest, and began to squeeze.  Her muscled bulged at the action.  She turned her head to the droid, her black eyes looking at it amusingly.  “Are you trying to choke me?” she asked, as the droid in her coils began to crack as it was crushed.  There was an ugly popping noise, and pink goo squished through her dark green coils.

The Kraang who had its hands around her neck said, “Kraang’s plan to asphyxiate the one known as One of the Children of the Phoenix is not going according to the plan that Kraang devised.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said, as she released the crumpled Kraang in her body, and reared up to her full height.  The Kraang hanging onto her was lifted off of its feet.  “You have to actually get at my wind pipe in order to do that.”  She twisted her body in on itself and wrapped the Kraangdroid in her coils.  “That’s my collar bone, dummy.”  With a quick corkscrew, the Kraangdroid made the same popping noise as his companion had only moments before.

The remaining two came at Aries, lasers firing.  A swing of the axe cut a gun in half, and the return swing cut the legs off the other.  It fell to the ground, the beam it shot from its gun firing into the air instead of in Aries.  The ram lowered his head, and rammed the now unarmed Kraangdroid into the wall, crushing the chest of it.  The strange squid-like brain jumped out, hitting him in the stomach, and making a squeak when it hit the ground.  It then squiggled off.

The ram turned to the one that was on the ground, and ducked as a laser came toward his head.  He raised his axe, and brought it down on the droid, embedding it into the Kraang lodged inside.

The three of them looked at each other, each nodding that they were unhurt. 

“Where are the humans?” Arcos asked, looking around.  “I smell them,” he looked down.  “Under there.” 

“There’s a door somewhere,” Medusa said.

“Shut up,” Aries said, holding his hand out.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Medusa hissed.

Arcos put his paw on her shoulder.  “Shhh.”

Aires walked to one end of the basement, near the wall.  Putting his ear up to it, he walked along it for a few feet until he came to a row of washing machines.  He picked one up and threw it across the room, and the next, and the next.  The metal hitting the cinderblock crashed.  The fourth, and last washing machine, was an open crawl space.

“You don’t have to be scared,” Aries called down the hole. 

“The Kraang are all gone,” Medusa called.

A man, holding a shotgun, slowly emerged from the opening, and let out a cry.  He aimed the shotgun at Aires and fired.

The ram rolled out of the way just in time.  The bullet hit the wall behind him.  “We’re here to help!” he yelled.  “We’re the good guys!”

“Ephraim!” a woman’s voice called out from in the dark of the space.

“We’re the good guys,” Arcos said, holding out his paws to indicate the room filled with Kraangdroid bodies.

Ephraim looked around, and saw the room in disarray. 

Arcos held his paw out, and Ephraim took it.  The bear hauled him out. 

Thirteen others came out of the hole.  They were a mix of men, women, and children of all ages, dark chocolate brown to a pale ivory. 

“How have you been able to keep from getting Kraangized?” Medusa asked.

The people stood a good distance away from the three mutants, Ephraim, who seemed to be in charge, said, “We’ve been careful…”

Aries laughed.  “Yeah, obviously.  Are any of you hurt?”

Arcos and Medusa looked at him as if he were crazy.

Ephraim shook his head, “No, we’re just shaken up.”

“You can’t say here,” Arcos said.  “You have to find somewhere else to go.”

Ephraim nodded.

“Are you with those other animal people?” a little boy asked.

Medusa darted closer, sending all fourteen of the humans in a jump.  “What other animal people?” she asked.  “You’ve seen other animal people?”

“They were fighting the aliens, too,” the little boy said.  He turned to the woman who stood next to him, “I told you, Mommy!’

“Where did you see them?” Aries asked, “How many were there?”

“What did they look like?” Arcos asked.

“Did the group have a name?” Medusa pressed.

The little boy sank into his mother’s shirt.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I just saw them.”

“What did they look like?” Arcos bent down on his knees, looking at the little boy in the eye.  “What kind of animal people were they?”

“They were all different kinds,” he said.  “Cats, and dogs, and rabbits, and lizards, and birds, and bugs….”

“Where did you see them?” the bear’s voice was edgy, despite him trying to make it gentle.

“Near the inlet,” he said.  “I saw them go down a sewage inlet.”

Arcos stood up, and looked up at his brother and sister, but Medusa was already gone up the stairs.  “Follow her,” he ordered.  Turning to the humans, he said, “Get out of here.”  He ran up the stairs after his siblings.

They were both gone.  He sniffed the air, and then ran in the direction of the smell of dusky cinnamon of his sister, and the damp lanolin with grass of his brother.  He didn’t realize Aries could go so fast, as to stay out of his vision as he ran after them.  Medusa had always been fast, once she’d dislodged herself from their mother’s body.  He found them waiting for him at the corner of a tall high rise, just overlooking the inlet.

On the rocks below, were an array of Kraang, in different suits, roaming near the water.  There were regular Kraangdroids, but also some riding the small flyers.  Others in the round ball flyers, and several that looked like giant bigfoots with glass bubbles in their heads, see-through to see the brains inside. 

“There is no way what we can get through all of those,” Medusa said.

“We need to find another way in,” Arcos said.

“We just need to go into one of the sewer entrances, anywhere in the city,” Aries said.

Both his brother and sister looked at him.  “Are you serious?” Arcos asked.

Aries nodded, and motioned for them to follow him.  They found a street drain nearby, and he opened the grate.  “All of the conduits lead to either the water treatment plant or the outlets.  They’re all interconnected, that is what all those junctions we find are.  They’re changes in conduits and where the inlets and outlets meet.”

“How do you know all this?” Arcos lowered his voice to keep it from echoing in the tunnel.

Medusa followed them down the grate, “Yeah,” she added.

He looked at them dubiously.  “Because I pay attention,” he said.

“To what?”  Medusa asked.

“To how the sewer system works,” he snapped quietly.  “We’ve been living in the sewer for almost three months, and you two don’t know how it works?”

“We don’t need to know how it works.  We just need to know it won’t work where we live,” Arcos said.

“It won’t,” Aries replied.  “It’s part of the abandoned system, from before they modernized it.  That’s why there isn’t any electricity in it.”

“So there are parts that do have electricity?” Medusa asked.  “Wouldn’t that shock someone because the sewer is all wet?”

“Only in dry junctions,” he said.  “There isn’t any more risk of shock than in any other damp environment.  If the wires and sewer happen to use the same tunnel, the wires in a waterproof conduit.”  He looked at his sister, “It isn’t like the wires are immersed in the sewage water.”

Medusa narrowed her black eyes.

“The old subway and sewer systems don’t have any electricity in them period.  The sewer tunnels never had electricity, and most of the modern ones don’t either.  The old subway had been disconnected from the grid altogether.  You’d have to jury-rig it to get power down there.”

“Is that how you’re going to get power for us in the Back-Up Burrow?” Arcos asked.

Aries nodded.  “That’s the plan, anyway.”

“Why didn’t you get us power in the Burrow, then?” Medusa asked.  “It’s cold in there!”

“It isn’t anywhere near as cold as it was in the warehouse,” Arcos chided.

“Because we aren’t staying in the Burrow,” Aries said peevishly.  “We were never staying in the Burrow.  Or did you forget we found Splinter at the same time we found the Burrow.”

The other two were silent for a while.

“Mama really likes him,” Medusa said.

Both of her brothers let out deep breaths of air, as if they’d been holding it in.  Relief seemed to flow through the three of them, like a discharge of electricity. 

“I think he likes her, too,” Arcos said.

“How can you tell?” Aries asked.  “The guy is as stone faced as a statue.”

“He watches her,” Medusa cut in.

“He watches us too.  He doesn’t have anything else to do!”

“That’s true,” Arcos said, looking at Medusa.

“He doesn’t do anything to deter her,” Medusa said.

“What is he supposed to do?” Aries asked.  “She never leaves him alone!”

“Tell her to leave him alone?” Medusa asked sarcastically.

“Then she might not help him anymore,” Arcos said.  “He’s still sick.”

“If we don’t help him and he dies from blood poisoning, he can’t report back to the Kraang, can he?”  Aries kicked a soda can that was in his way.

“Or the Rat King,” Arcos said.

“My guess would be The Rat King,” Medusa said with a tint of sadness in her voice.  “He is a rat after all.”

Arcos sniffed the air, “I don’t smell anything yet.”

“So how do you know where to go to get near the inlet?” Medusa asked.

“We don’t want to go near the inlet,” Aries said.  “Would you set up house near an opening to the outside when a bunch of aliens are looking for you?”

Medusa clicked her tongue.

“It will be deeper in the sewer, near somewhere where there is an air flow of some kind,” Aries continued.  “It will also need to have some way to keep people from just barging in.  At least it will if they have any sense.”

“You’ve really thought about this,” Arcos looked at his brother with appreciation.

“Yeah,” the peevishness was back in the ram’s voice.  “Same way I think about how were going to have fresh water when the water all around is mixed with—“

“I can smell horse,” Arcos cut him off.  “And blood.”

They all stopped, and Medusa sniffed the air.  “I don’t.”

“This way,” Arcos set off at a trot.

The others followed.  “I can smell them now,” Medusa said.

The three of them started to run, emerging into a large room, much like the big room in The Burrow, filled with mutants.

 

 


	70. Chapter 70

That night, Splinter and The Phoenix had slept with their backs to each other, each on their own mats, under their own blankets.  

“You must tell me if you get too hot or too cold,” Phoenix told him before falling asleep.

“I will,” he had promised.

He had dreamt that night, one of those dreams that The Observer is aware of, yet can do nothing about.  He was laying naked on top of his beloved, her dark, glossy hair splayed on the buckwheat pillow underneath her.  He could see his arm in the corner of his eyes, muscled and sun bronzed.  The feel of her skin against his skin was like silk.  His body, and hers, were covered in sweat, and his lips were at her neck, with his tongue swirling on her skin.

The taste of her was intoxicating, even this far from her core.

Her breath was slowing from their vigorous activity.  “You will never guess who I saw in the market today,” she said.

He remembered this night.  The Observer noted it was the night they thought Miwa was conceived.  The doctor said that there could be up to a week from the actual date given.  That could have made it one of several amorous nights, and one particularly amorous day, but it was this night that Tang Shen thought it happened.

“Who?” he asked, his lips having made their way to her collarbone.

“Satou Ryo,” she said with a giggle.

He pulled himself up, and regarded her hard in the dim light.  “You did?” his voice was not gentle.

“Oh, Yoshi,” she reached up and kissed his shoulder.  “You aren’t jealous are you?”

“What did he have to say to you?” he asked.

“He said hello, silly,” his wife looked up at him with her gorgeous dark eyes.

He grunted.

“Oh, you are jealous!”  She had a smile on her face.

“He doesn’t need to be talking to you in the market,” he said petulantly. 

“He’s married with two children, Yoshi,” Tang Shen said.  “That is like me being jealous of you seeing that Russian girl you had a fling with all those years ago…what was her name?  Svana?”

“Svetla,” he corrected.  “And it isn’t the same thing.  I had a fling with Svetla.  Ryo was not a fling.”

“A few months!” she said.  “And it doesn’t matter how long I was with him.  What matters is who I am with now…and that is you.”  She pulled him down and kissed him.  “That was a long time ago,” she assured him.  “What matters is the present.”

In the morning, he knew that there was more to the dream, but could not remember it.  As he came in from his morning practice, Phoenix had his tea waiting for him, and was sewing scraps of cloth together to make another blanket.  He wasn’t sure what she going to do with all the blankets the three of them made.  They must have at least four extra by now.  Granted they were light, beginning as only a pieced together sheet, and then simply two sheets put together, with an open edge, like a duvet cover.  Perhaps they were getting ready for next winter, he surmised.

After he had finished his ritual of drinking his tea, with Phoenix’s eyes on her work as if he wasn’t there, she looked up at him, and tilted her head to the side.  “Read to me again,” she said.

He looked at her, conflicted.  She was a pleasant audience to read to, but he felt rather ridiculous reading out loud to an adult.   It was also a safe activity, an activity that held off questions, or any kind of conversation, but gave the illusion of interaction.  However, she had commanded him to read.  He could not have anyone commanding him to do anything, no matter who they were or how innocuous the command was.  He had not allowed his tiny children to command him, he certainly was not going to allow this woman to do so.

“You will read to me, first,” he said.  “Then I will read again.”

This obviously satisfied her fine, “We shall read a book of each to each other,” she said, getting up and fetching the large tome.  She sank down next to him, sitting cross-legged, and opened the book on her lap.  With a practiced twist, she turned a chuck of pages to “Book II”, and began to read out loud.

“Now the other gods and the armed warriors on the plain slept soundly, but Zeus was wakeful, for he was thinking…”

Her voice, when she read to her children in the evening, was one of a performer.  She made voices for each of the characters, trying to make her own voice match whatever the description of the characters might be.  The presence was of an actress, projecting the character she was portraying with a practiced ease.  This reading, was not said with ease at all.  The words were practiced, she had obviously read them many, many times before.  Her voice, however, was not that of an actress.  It was the voice of a supplicant, speaking devotion to the Great Beloved to whom Homer had petitioned for inspiration over five thousand years ago.  Her voice was passionate and sensual almost to the point of eroticism.  It gripped him in his loins, much like the euphoria that gripped one when the physical act of practice took one to another realm, separating their mind and body so one was in two places at once.  Her eyes stayed on the words, but they might has well have been looking at him, the pull of her was so intense.

“The goddess Eos, rosy-fingered dawn, now wended her way to vast Olympos that she might herald the day to Zeus and to the other immortals…”

He found he was looking at her lips as she spoke, and in his peripheral vision he saw her pink cheeks on ivory skin, sworled green eyes moving across the page.  The skin on her throat moved as she breathed, so pale he could see the blue veins running up it to her face.

“But Hera said to Athene,  ‘Alas, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus, unweariable, shall the Argives fly home to their own land over the broad sea, and leave Priam and the Trojans the glory of still keeping Helen…?”

He had grossly underestimated what this activity was, he realized suddenly.  While the words made their way through his brain, through the tone of breathy fervor, he realized the words were of no matter.  It was the act of the reading, the act of their voices sounding the words that was important.  It was enormously intimate, the rhythmic speaking ebbing and flowing with craving, carrying the two of them on the same peaks and valleys of grasping for something of great urgency and not being able to quite keep it.  It was illicit, like two teenagers stealing kisses behind corners, out of the eyes of any chaperones that might be close by.   Something he knew that neither of them would do with another soul.  Something he knew that neither of them would divulge to anyone.  Something that held them both at arm’s length from each other without cutting each other off.  It was a hand held out over a chasm, without pulling either one over it.

“And now Iris, fleet as the wind, was sent by Zeus to tell the bad news among the Trojans…Iris spoke, saying, ‘Old man, you talk idly, as in time of peace, while war is at hand. I have been in many a battle, but never yet saw such a host as is now advancing…’”

They were speaking words of peace to each other, while war was at hand.  But just as a great host was now advancing on them, they could still play the game, and pretend that the tone behind the words was all that mattered.

When she was finished, she looked at him and smiled, and they looked at each other for a long time.  Minutes went by, while he waited for her to say something.  She didn’t, she merely looked at him with that soft look on her face that she has when she moved energy into him.  Her breath was deep and slow, as if she was recovering from an energetic activity.  He noticed that his own breathing was very similar.

She blinked, and then turned her head.  “I think the rice has bugs in it,” she said.

He started at the statement, which had nothing to do with anything he was thinking about. 

She brought over the large bag of rice that was in the other room and they debugged it, putting it in various sized glass jars to save any more insect eggs from hatching.  He threaded more plarn as she crocheted squares.  They did not touch each other, there was a pressure of space, like two magnets trying to be pressed together at the same pole, so that neither could quite penetrate the other’s place enough to provide a contact.

After they were done with that, he read to her.  Again, she looked at him with a euphoric lust, her eyes on his lips as they moved, her own lip moving once in a while, and occasionally  reciting phrases that she had memorized when he got to them. 

“Iris then came close up to her and said, "Come hither, child, and see the strange doings of the Trojans and Achaeans…”

Indeed, what strange doings were happening between he and his enemy within words written so long ago.

He stopped abruptly, his ears perking up.  “Your children are running this way,” he said.

“Mama!” they called, coming bursting into the room. 

“You have to come,” Aries said, being the last one in the room.  “We’ve found a bunch of mutants.”

Phoenix stood up, Splinter not even a nano-second behind her.  “What do you mean?” she asked, shaking her head, trying to get her bearings.

“There’s been a fight—“ Medusa started.

“—There’s been a battle,” Arcos interrupted her.  “Like the one with the Grey Cats.”

This statement seemed to have some sort of great significance to her, for she gasped loudly, and said, “Get my things!” 

Medusa grabbed a basket, and Aries grabbed a bag, and both ran out into the larger room.  Arcos followed them, and Phoenix went to where her slingshot and knife were, and slipped both of them into their loops.   Standing at the basket that held what was left of his weapons, she looked up at him with soft eyes, and nodded her head.

She disappeared into the other room, as he donned the rest of the basket.

Then they were all running down a tunnel.  Medusa made her way back around, and scooped her mother up in her coils, “You’re going too slow,” she muttered, and then darted into the front.  Phoenix seemed not at all ruffled by the move, and simply kept herself still within her daughter’s spiraled body.

Splinter was surprised at how fast The Children of the Phoenix could run.  The boys were on all fours, running like animals, so that he had to do the same to keep up with them.   He was especially impressed with Medusa.  Her speed was close to amazing, she remained in front, her tongue flicking in front of her, darting down passages with what seemed like no hesitation at all.

“Where are we going?” Phoenix asked after several minutes.

“Near the inlet,” Medusa answered. 

“The inlet?  Are we anywhere near the inlet?”

“A little,” Aries called to her from behind.

For almost a half an hour they ran, not stopping, following Medusa’s lead.  Then, Splinter smelled blood, and heard the sound of many people talking, and crying, in the distance.  A few minutes later, they burst into an open space, and Medusa gracefully put down her mother.

Splinter came to a stop next to her and stood up, looking at her face.  She was looking around the room in shock, the color draining from her visage at what she saw.  “Oh my god,” she whispered.

The chamber looked like a train wreck.  There were bloodied bodies lying all over the filthy floor, several people wandering around like zombies, and several others who looked like they were trying to help.  All of them were mutants, of various shapes and sizes.  There was not a human among them.  The smell of blood was heavy in the air, and the room was in total disarray.  There was no order to it, people had been dragged in and many dumped, the filth of the floor showing rut marks where they had been pulled.

He looked at Phoenix, and she saw her face on the edge of panic.  Her children were all staring at her, obviously waiting to be told what to do.  Her eyes were moving slowly around the room, the look of alarm growing deeper each movement.  He thought for a moment that she would break down, he had a vision in his head of her sinking to the ground in tears, covering her face with her hands.  She said she was a healer, but this was not a cold or a cut.  This was a warzone.  This golden thing, who could not even discipline her children properly, how could they have thought she could handle this?

Then, her shoulders squared, and he saw a complete transformation come over her.  The color returned to her face, the look she had on it was all business.  She took a deep breath, and strode into the room.

“Who is in charge?!” she thundered.


	71. Chapter 71

The room went silent at Phoenix’s demand. 

Splinter’s hair went on end in a way it hadn’t when they’d entered the room.  One could hear a pin drop, he was sure even The Phoenix’s insensitive ears would be able to pick up the sound.  It was the silence before a battle.

No one charged at them, though.  No one made any moves to attack them at all.  The people who were standing up were looking at each other confused.  “We don’t have anyone in charge…” someone said.

“Who is acting like they are in charge?” she called into the quiet.

Several people pointed to a raccoon mutant who was positioning a prostrate person on the floor.

“You,” she pointed to him, and walked determined in his direction, “come here.”

Splinter had never heard her speak this way before, he would not have thought it possible for her to do so.  She did not address her children this way, even when angry.  When she spoke to end their conversations, it was with a finality and a parental threat in her voice.  This voice was something else entirely.  It was the words spoken by someone who could not be rebuked.  Her entire presence filled the room, he felt it pushing against him hard.  He pushed back, feeling everyone else’s in the room retreat to make way for his and hers.

The raccoon came over to her, his tail swishing behind him.  He was wearing a button up shirt, with long sleeves of a t-shirt sewn to it. 

“You in charge?”  Phoenix asked.

“She came,” Splinter heard someone in the room say softly.  “They were telling the truth…”

“I guess,” the raccoon looked unsure of himself.  He had a thick body, but like the animal he was mutated with, but his legs in his pants were straight, like a humans, as were his arms. 

“Are you in charge, or not?” Phoenix’s voice was harsh.  “If you aren’t, then I need someone who will be.”

The raccoon nodded, his own attitude changing to one of fake confidence.  “Yes, Phoenix,” he said.  “I am in charge.”

This mutant knew who she was.

“Good,” she said.  “Call your unhurt people over here.”

The raccoon looked at her, uncertainity coming to his face again.   For her part, the Phoenix’s face remained imperious. The raccoon looked at Splinter, as if trying to garner some sort of support for something.  The rat’s face remained as it always did, impassive.  He then looked at the three children standing next to them, the three of them looked impatient.

“If you can walk,” the raccoon turned around to face the room, “I need you over here!’

A group of mutants meandered their way over to them.  Phoenix tapped the raccoon on the shoulder, and said calmly.  “Now.”

The raccoon nodded, “NOW!” he yelled.

“Good boy,” she said with a smug smile.

In an instant, they were surrounded by a group of mutants, blocking their exit from the door if they had wished to leave.  Splinter instinctively went through a risk analysis.  None of the mutants who surrounded them would be any trouble to dispatch.  In fact, he had no misgivings, if it came down to it, that the children and their mother would dispatch one each before he could get to the rest of them.  Any of them that might pose a threat were hurt, most of them on the floor unable to do anything other than groan.  The door was just at their back, if they had to make a retreat.   He doubted very much that would be necessary.  The entire room would be destroyed in no time.

“You,” Phoenix pointed to the raccoon, “will listen to me.  You,” she swept her hand across those gathered around them, “will listen to him.”

Every last one of them nodded.  They had looks of awe on their faces, as if they were seeing an apparition or an angel.  Or a monster.

“What’s your name?” she asked the raccoon.

“Sparks,” he answered.

The imperious look left her face, and was replaced with a smile.  “Sparks,” she repeated kindly, “because of the dots on your face.”

He nodded.

“Alright then, Sparks,” she was all business again, “who’s your right hand?”

“She is,” he pointed to a red tabby cat who stood across from him.  “Russe.”

Phoenix turned to Russe.  “You are going to play triage,” she explained.  “We need to clean an area in a far corner, and you’re going to put those who you don’t think will make it there.  Choose two other people to be with you.  Your job is to make them as comfortable as possible before they die.  That is your only job unless you are in bodily danger, do you understand?”

“Da,” she said in a pretty, Russian accent.  She motioned to some others, and they followed her away.

“You, you, and you,” she indicated three others.  “You are going to gather pine needles.  Green pine needles, lots and lots of them.  And pots.  Big pots.”  They looked at her like she was crazy.  “We are going to use a pine needle tea as a disinfectant.”

“Aries, you’re going to get a fresh water set up in here.  I need fresh water immediately.”

The ram nodded, and took several mutants with him on his errand.

“Medusa, go get all the wood you can carry, so we can boil some water,” Medusa nodded.  “And get one of our barrels of fresh water, so we have some on hand.  And some soap.”

“Arcos,” she turned to her last remaining child, “Go with Medusa and get any extra mats, squares, and blankets that we have.  And if you happen to find any tarps or something, get them too.  And a table to put patients on.”

She looked at Splinter, and her authoritative visage faded.

“I will stay with you,” he said.

She smiled gratefully, and then commanding look was back.

“The rest of you, get this place as clean as we can.  I need a place to work.”  She pointed to a horse mutant lying on the floor, “Cut his hair just below the quick on his tail,” she instructed.  “Wash it and disinfect it.  Sparks,” her gaze turned back to the raccoon.  “You’re my nurse, and you make sure that everyone else is doing their job, got it?”

He nodded, “Got it.”

“Let’s go.”  She strode farther in to the room and approached the first mutant she came.

Splinter did not recognize this woman, who commanded those around her with the air of a general.  It was not the kind healer who nursed him back to health, or the insistent caretaker who cajoled her patient into compliance.  This was the woman of whom his sons had told him, the one who directed giant hybrid animals in such a way that they listened without question.  The one who decided who lived or died and then acted on that decision.  The one who had threatened to kill Michaelangelo, and meant the threat with every fiber of her being.  This was the woman who fought her sons and their friend with violence and ferocity.  While her world was different than his, he was struck that she was his counterpart in her own world.  She may let others have the illusion of making decisions, of having power, but it was she who held it.  And now it was she who yielded it.

She sank down onto her knees, and her demeanor changed to that of the gentle bedside manner she had taken with Splinter so many times before.  Her presence shrank to encompass a small sphere around those who were very physically close to her, and her attention was placed entirely on the person in her care.  Gone was the viciousness of only a moment ago, it was no floating about the room, and she was totally unaware of it all.

Splinter remained standing, looking down and watching her work.

“Where are you hurt?” she asked the bird mutant she was tending.

“Phoenix?” she said faintly.

“Yes,” she answered.  “I need to know where you’re hurt.”

“My stomach…”

The Phoenix set to work trying to fix the bird up.  Examining the wound, she exclaimed, “This isn’t a laser-it’s a gunshot!”  She looked to Sparks for an explanation.

“The Earth Defense Force has two fortifications on either side of the city,” he explained.  “They shoot anything that isn’t human.”

Phoenix sighed, and turned back to her patient.

As Splinter watched her work, going from mutant to mutant, he saw that most of the mutants she dealt with knew her, or at least knew of her.  They all spoke to her with the utmost respect, bordering on reverence.  It reminded him sharply of how others spoke to him, when he had many others in his life.  Before his mutation, those around him spoke with the same tone.  Some of those whom he had met so recently spoke to him in the same way.  His sons, whose reverence he reveled in, had the same wonder on their faces when Splinter was at battle…how many times had they seen him fight?  Not many, but enough to instill astonishment in them.  These mutants regarded The Phoenix the same way.

The room soon smelled of smoke and pine.  The table appeared, and the mutant she was then working on was moved to it.  The sounds in the room had begun to have a background hum, rather than the disorganized chaos they had been when they’d entered.  There were groans coming from those lying down, but they lessened as time went on.

The Phoenix seemed unaware of anything that was going on around her, other than the patient in front her at the moment.  She would occasionally stop, looking the mutant in the eye, having a look on her face that reminded of Donatello when he was trying to retrieve something from the back of his brain.  She would then smile, and return to her ministrations, speaking softly and explaining what she was doing.

“You will get me my patients when I’m finished with them,” she told Sparks.  She gave directions as she treated those in front of her, as if they were afterthoughts.  “And someone will need to clean and disinfect the table after each person.”   As this was done, she washed her hands in a bowl of pine water, and dipped her instruments in another.  After each cleaning, the bowls were changed by a young mutant that looked to be some type of chipmunk.  He stayed near the two of them, hovering the background nervously, scurrying off whenever the bowls of water needed emptying and refilling.

Some of the mutants would look as if they were awestruck as she tended to them, as if they could not believe she was there.  They would visibly relaxed once she touched them, and he could feel the energy around them shifting and moving at an almost constant basis.   She acted as if she were supremely confident, knowing what needed to be done, and how it needed to be done.  Those about her did not question her when she asked for something, and her asking was gentle and polite, not the demands of her entrance to the room.

An insect mutant that Splinter could not recognize the species of, was put the on the table as Phoenix washed her hands.  It had a pincer mouth and one of its hands was also a pincer, while the other was that of a carapased human.  They were both simply coming out of its body on long, hairy arms.   It was long, with little nobbles sticking off of each segment in its body.  It thrashed on the table when Phoenix tried to touch him.

“It’s alright,” she crooned, “I’m here to help.”

It made an illegible sound, and tried to sit up.

Phoenix reach over to what would have been its shoulder had it any, and pushed him back down the table.  “Let’s have a look at you,” she murmured.

The creature reached out its pincered hand so quickly, that he knew Phoenix, in her focused state, didn’t see it.  Even if she had not been in so absorbed in her task, he did not think she would have been able to do anything about it, if she had seen it coming.  He reached out effortlessly and grabbed the mutant by the wrist just before the pincer came to her throat.  Her head would have been cut off by the time she even registered surprise at the action.

A sudden anger rose in him, breaking the calm that he’d been experiencing from remaining in the moment watching her work.  How dare this creature attempt to hurt her!  She was trying to help him, she was putting herself at risk to help him.  She was using everything in her arsenal to stitch, disinfect, mend, and put back together those in front of her, all the while staying in a state of such focus, he knew she was in the ‘now’ in a way she wasn’t anywhere else.  This creature was trying to defile that, and that was utterly unacceptable.  He felt his lip curl slightly and he had to school himself not to crush the creature’s wrist in his hand.  

Phoenix looked at Splinter with utter shock in her eyes, mimicking the looks that many of her patients were giving her.  She turned her head several times, from the claw near her neck, to Splinter’s face, back to the claw, back to Splinter.  “Thank you,” she finally breathed, her voice filled with amazement.

He nodded curtly and pulled the mutant’s hand above his head away from her neck.

The creature then tried to sit up, up was thwarted by a quick push on his shoulder with two of Splinter’s fingers.  He kept the pressure there, and saw Phoenix’s mouth drop open in the corner of his eye.

“Is he always like thi?,” she turned angrily to Sparks, and gestured to the bug.

“Yeah…” the raccoon said slowly.

“Well, knock him out or something!” she huffed at him.

Splinter gave the mutant a quick cuff on the head at his temple, and the bug fell limp on the table.  “He will not be moving for the rest of your ministrations,” Splinter explained.

The look of surprised turned to one of delight on her face.  The anger was replaced by utter surprise at her look having changed so quickly.  Her eyes shined, as if she’d just found a gleaming, new penny lying in the street.  “Thank you!” she beamed.  She then turned and finished up the bug.

He was able to call back the calm quickly, decades of practice making it second nature.  He was slightly surprised at his own reaction.  Not his physical one, he’d have done that in any situation, but his emotional one.  It was she who put herself at risk.  If that is what she chose to do, so be it, why should the risks involved make his angry?  What was she, but a pleasant respite in his life’s journey, soon to be gone when he was well enough to look for his children, and soon to be an enemy once again whom his sons would fight and one day defeat. He began to pay attention more to the mutants she tended than to her, but his considerations would always drift back, watching her as The Observer, without judgment or feeling.

She talked with whom she was tending, explaining to them what she was doing and why she was doing it.  She gave great sympathy when she was doing something that hurt, and gave grave disappointment, almost shame, to those who did not follow her instructions when she gave them.   They also talked with her, small talk, to keep their minds off the pain and procedures.  He was able to garner little bits of information from them, disparate pieces that sometimes fit together and sometimes didn’t. 

“No one knew what happened to you…”

“You look…” the mutant looked her up and down, pausing at her corset, “…different.”

“Yes, I know,” she answered him dryly.

“I like it,” he managed to chuckle.

She gave him a warning look, and the smile vanished from the mutant’s face.

“We went to where we were told you lived, and the place was destroyed…”

“I remembered that you treated my cut with garlic oil, and I made some to use…”

“Good boy,” she told the young man who had remembered.

It appeared that, just as many of these people knew about her, she knew a great deal of them.  She addressed many by name, just as many as whose names she asked.  They told of her of things they remembered, and she asked about their past hurts that she’d treated.   She had, apparently, not been exaggerating when she said she was the doctor of mutants.  None of the mutants she approached refused her help.  Many of them seemed relieve that she had finally arrived at them.  They appeared to be hurting less when they left her side, or at the very least comforted.  While none of these people seemed to be in her immediate community, she was connected with them by a bond he did not have with anyone save a precious few outside of his family.

“They said you were dead,” one patient told her. 

“Well,” she answered gently, “’They’ were wrong.”  She chuckled.  “You can tell ‘them’ that The Phoenix has risen from the ashes.”

“They said that you cry on wounds and they heal like a real phoenix.”

She stopped abruptly, and looked the mutant in the eyes.   “What?”

The mutant began to repeat himself, but she cut him off.

“You’ve seen Toaster?”

“Toaster?” the mutant asked.

“A dog,” she explained.  “Light brown, short ears on the top of his head, brown eyes…”

The mutant shook his head.  “No,” he said.  “A bird told me about it.”

Her shoulders slumped.  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” she huffed.  “He’s not the one who it happened to.”

“It’s true?” the mutant whispered.

Splinter’s mind had just asked the same thing, only his internal voice was credulous.

“No,” she shook her head, annoyed.  “If it was true, don’t you think I’d been crying all over everyone?”

The mutant seemed to be considering the statement.

“Toaster wasn’t in his right mind when it happened,” she explained.  “Or his…” she seemed to be searching for word.  She sighed, and her face twisted, “…woman, Dezi.”

“You cried on him?” the mutant asked.

“Yes, I did,” she said.  “I think…” she sounded unsure.  “I don’t remember, to be honest.”

“And your tears healed him.”  It was a statement.

“No,” she said again.  “No healing tears. Sorry,” she raised her eyebrows.  “Only healing herbs.”  She turned to the bowl of pine water and began scrubbing her hands with soap.  “You’re all done with your herbs for now,” she said, and he was removed from the table, and another mutant put on.

Splinter wasn’t aware of how much time had passed.  He knew it was quite a lot.  It wasn’t that he felt it, he didn’t, but with the number of people Phoenix had dealt with, it must have been.  Aries had set up a water filter already, and a huge pile of green pine needles were shoved in a corner.  Large amounts of the floor had been cleaned, Sparks had started speaking to those around him with the authority of a supervisor.  Phoenix did not seem to slowing down either, and it occurred to him that she was truly in her element.  This was where she shined, what she was meant to do with herself, her Destiny, and she embraced with such intensity that she was totally unaware of anything else around her, save the little bubble around the table.

Another mutant was put on the table, then another, then another.  When another was put on, a large lizard with a ruffle slightly open around his neck, exposing the yellow and red of the sails, a contrast to his light green scales.

 Phoenix’s face softened tremendously, like a mother who sees her child for the first time in a long, long time.  “Oh,” she put her hand his shoulder, and Splinter felt a surge of jealousy break through his calm.  He wanted to snatch her hand away, snatch the ‘Oh’ away.  “I remember you,” she almost sang the words.  “You’re the one who set us all free.  Do you remember me?”

The lizard smiled, as if the two of them shared a secret.  “How could I forget you?” he said in a weak voice.  “You were the one who took the little ones…”

“Yes,” she blinked back tears.  “I didn’t know if you escaped,” she said casually, looking his body over at his wounds. 

“I didn’t know you were The Phoenix,” he replied.

“Today seems to be full of surprises, doesn’t it?”

“I am not surprised you are The famed Phoenix,” he chuckled and it turned into a cough.  “I remember what they did to you…” his voice became distant.  “I am not surprised.”

“Then you remember more than I do,” she assured him, bringing his face forward so she could look in his eyes. 

As she mended him, sending energy into him, and lathering him with lotions, and potions, and salves, she explained gently what was wrong with him, and what she was doing.  The longer she did it, the more Splinter had to fight to keep calm.  He wanted her hands off of this man, he wanted the man gone from the table.  He did not want secrets shared between she and anyone.  He had to fight being angry with himself for caring what she did with whom.  All of this was only a pleasant reprieve, he kept telling himself.

He was brought abruptly out of his self-soothing by the lizard asking Phoenix, “Is this your husband?”

She blushed, “No,” she chuckled.  She turned to look Splinter in the eye, her own searching for something.  Her scrutiny unsettled him like few things could, leaving an uncomfortable fluttering in his chest.  “He is my friend,” she said slowly, her attention back on her patient.

“How are the little ones?” the lizard asked.

“Some of them made it,” she said, “and some of them didn’t.  You, however,” she straightened up and smiled, “are going to make it just fine.”

She dealt with only a few more mutants, smiling at them and speaking to them softly.  Once the lizard was gone, his anger dissipated, and he was able to come back to his center again without any effort at all.

While the little snippets he’d heard had given him a great deal of information, the piece that struck him the most was not something that was said.  In these last few patients, he recognized the good-natured bedside smile she gave each of them.  It was the same one she had given to him in those days when had first come out of his fever. 

But it was not the same one she gave him anymore.

The one she gave him nowadays, a little more than two months passed his waking up, was not the lusty one of listening to him reading.  Nor was it the sweet motherly one that she gave her children.  It was a separate one, given to him with shining eyes, and a desiring curve of her mouth.  It was a mature smile, with her lips slightly parted, showing a glint of the cream of her teeth.

It was her smile that belonged to only him.  

 

 


	72. Chapter 72

Phoenix looked about, the glow that was not a glow fading from her vision, and the energy that kept her going for, she didn’t know how long, going with it, leaving her with an exhaustion that crept from her lower back up and down her body.

Turning to Sparks, she said, “No one else?”

“You’ve seen everyone once,” he said, “Do you want to check up on anyone?”

“No,” Splinter said before she could answer. 

She spun on him, her eyes flashing, her mouth open to say something.  Did he just answer for her?!  Like she could not make her own decisions?

“How long have we been here?” he said to Sparks, looking into Phoenix’s eyes with the same flame.

“Uh…” Sparks backed away from the two of them.  “A long time?”

“How long?” he asked, eyes still on The Phoenix.  She glared back at him.

“About 14 hours…” Sparks voice was quiet, as if he said it in a small voice it would sound better.  “Everyone else has slept except you two…”

The fire faded from Phoenix’s eyes at Sparks’ words, and her shoulders slumped.   The words coming out of Sparks mouth hit her like a sheet of warm air on a hot day.  She was tired, and didn’t have the heart to fight over him being right. 

She dropped her gaze from Splinter’s.  He was not unaware that was the first time she had admitted defeat at one of their stand-offs.

“Where are my children?” she asked.

“They’ve gone,” he said.  “They said you were safe here with him,” he gestured gently to Splinter.

“I need to take him home,” she said tiredly, looking up at Sparks.  “He is my patient, too.”

Sparks looked at Splinter appraisingly, and smiled a knowing smile.  All of these people assume too much, he mused.

Phoenix did not wait for a reply, she turned and headed toward the door.  “I will be back for my things later,” she said, “You can use them if you need.”

 Splinter followed her out.  When they’d gone a ways away from the entrance and those guarding it, she said, without looking at him, “I am not a child that gets told what to do.”  Her voice had little fight in it.

“You are a stubborn woman who needs to be reminded of what to do,” he said.

She stopped walking and turned to him with her hands in fists at her side.  “ **I** am stubborn?” she asked haughtily.  Indignation rose in her throat like bile, she didn’t know she had enough energy to call it up.  “You are the one who doesn’t rest, or sleep, or take your medicine like you are supposed to!”

“ **You** do not eat,” he replied, his ire rising.  “I have seen you give your portion of a meal to someone else.  You do not sleep, you are always waking to check on me.”

“You’re sick!” she cried.  “You need to be checked on!  You’re the one who fights me at every turn.  Don’t you want to—“ she stopped herself before she finished the sentence.  Don’t you want to get better? Her brain still said what her mouth hadn’t.  If she asked it out loud, he might say yes, and then he was one step closer to leaving.  He had stayed with her for fourteen hours while she played doctor.  He had saved her life from that earwig mutant.  She could pretend, for a while longer, that he would stay.  She blinked rapidly to keep tears from spilling over, and looked around.  “I don’t know how to get back to The Burrow,” she said in a small voice.

Splinter, despite his own fatigue, noticed the rapid blinking, and his irritation at her rebelliousness faded.  “I do,” he assured her.  Why did she have to be this way?  So defiant one moment, and then so accommodating and compliant the next?  He was used to such behavior in his sons, but he knew what made them act in such ways.  He had yet to figure out what made the Phoenix acquiesce when she chose to do so.  “You do not have to take me back to The Burrow,” he said.  “You can sleep here,” he motioned behind them, to the makeshift emergency room.

She shook her head, “I don’t want to stay here.”  She began walking forward again, her feet moving slowly.  She felt like she had to drag them to get them up, like they had great weights attached to them.  Good god, she was tired.  She didn’t want to fight with Splinter, she didn’t have it in her fight with him.  But she didn’t want to stay here, either.  She wanted to go home, back to her warehouse, with her formica table with the chrome legs, and the white chipped vase.  Back to her bed, which was large enough to accommodate her and her children.  That was large enough to accommodate she and Splinter, with her in his arms.  She shook her head, and even that took effort.

“Come, then,” he said, reaching out slightly to take her arm, and then stopping himself.  He couldn’t touch her.  Not after…not after having been assaulted by her emotions, and holding her, and reading to her, and staying with her while she doctored.  He felt he had seen into her soul, been given a glimpse of something utterly private, with the culmination of all that had transpired in the last few days.  He couldn’t touch her.

She didn’t notice, being a little ahead of him, and her head swimming slightly from lethargy.    “Thank you for—“ her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat, knowing phlegm was not why her larynx had tightened.  “—saving my life back there.”  She turned to look at him, “I didn’t even see him move.”  Of course, she hadn’t seen Splinter move either.  In fact, the entire thing seemed to happen by magic.  She blinked, and all of sudden the rat was holding the insect’s wrist near her throat.  Another movement that had been too fast for her to perceive had the mutant pressed against the table.  The only thing she had seen was when he pressed his fingers into the bug’s head to knock him out.  She recalled when he first woke up, and had grabbed her own wrist, how she had not seen him do that either.  It wasn’t, and then it was.  Just like he was going to be…he was here, and then he wouldn’t be any longer.

“It was nothing,” he said, for it wasn’t.  It took little energy at all to do it, and he suspected it kept anyone else from acting in such a manner after that point.  He’d easily seen it coming, and easily dealt with it.

“It wasn’t nothing to me,” she kept her gaze at him, willing him to understand, willing him to not understate the significance of the action, for fear of it being insignificant to him.   “I still have my life because of you.”

“I still have my life because of you,” he said.  The feeling of gratefulness that every practioner sought after, that was achieved after years of practice, filled him up like a spring.  It was tinted with her, of that gratefulness he had tasted whenever she had worked to heal him with her hands. 

She smiled, but it took effort.  They were now even, a life for a life.  A debt repaid.  The thought made her throat tighten even more, so that she looked away from him, and took a deep breath to steady herself.  Each movement she made, each thing she said, each decision she made moved him closer and closer to being gone.  It moved him closer and closer to going back to the Kraang, or the Rat King, or both.  It moved him farther and farther away from her.  She couldn’t seem to stop the flow of time, to make it stop, no matter what she did.  It was so blatantly apparent, and now they were even…no indebtedness left for either of them.

Splinter noticed that she slowed with each step she took, and that her smile was not the bright one she usually beamed at him.  “We can stop whenever you need,” he said gently.  “There is no hurry.”

“There is no hurry,” she repeated, and felt a rush of relief, similar to when the unbidden thought spoke to her.

The unbidden thought had told her to keep him safe.  He did not need her to keep him safe.  Even sick, with an intermittent fever, he was the one who kept her safe, even after all she done to try and make it the other way around.  If it was not for him, she’d be headless right now, having already bled out on the junction floor.  The feeling of failure lurked in the background of her thoughts, trying to wiggle its way in.

She sat down on a step, and he sat next to her.  His body was close, their personal space with each other having shrunk without either of them knowing.  “You know many of the mutants in there,” he said.

She nodded.  “Yes,” her smile was more genuine now, but still not his.  “There are a lot of mutants in New York City,” she said.  “They have no one to help them.”  She looked back at the direction they had come.  So many of those mutants were hurt so badly, by humans, by guns with bullets.  Many of them had been humans once, and those that had been animals beforehand were people now.  They had lived their lives in the shadows, separated, not for themselves, but those around them.  Most of them could easily kill a human.  It was for the humans that they sequestered themselves, thinking of themselves as monsters.  It was humans who now hunted them, when humans should have been hunting the Kraang who had taken over their city.   “Many of them have helped me and my family,” she told him.   “It is only right help them, too.”

In that moment, with her looking down the tunnel away from him, he _knew_ that she was not his enemy.  She was not with the Kraang, she couldn’t be.  She would not have done what she’d done if she was.  He did not know why she and her children were after the same mutagen canisters that his sons were, in an attempt to clean up their mess.  But he was certain that it was not to get them back for Kraang. 

She turned back to him, and her smile was his again, soft and beaming, like gentle sunlight.  “Like with you,” she said.

Warmheartedness flooded through him, in the dark of the tunnel where he knew she could barely see him.  The shadows played across her face and body, and he wanted to…he was at a loss.  He wanted to do something, and did not know what it was.

“We are not far from the other mutants place,” he said.  “We can go back there and you can sleep.”

She shook her head, and stood up.   “No,” she motioned with her hand for him to come.  “I don’t want to sleep there.  I want to sleep at—“ she was about to say “our place,” but stopped herself before it came out.  “The Burrow,” she finished.

“Those people need you.”  He did not know why he was encouraging her to go back.

 He felt a guilty pang, covered in satisfaction when she said, “You need me, too.”

“Not as much as they,” his voice was quieter than he meant it to be.

She tilted her head, and gave him that look at was only his, that she had not given to any of the mutants in the room they had left, that she had not given to her children. 

He didn’t understand, she thought.  She couldn’t tell why he was saying what he was saying, what it meant, where he was meaning it to lead.  She only knew that he didn’t understand.  “The Universe lead them to me,” she said simply.  “But the Universe lead me to you.”

 


	73. Chapter 73

Aries woke up, and lifted his head from his sister’s warm, hard body.  Her scales were very soft, but there was nothing between them and her muscles.  She had learned how to contort in such a way as to make her body comfortable for those using her as a mattress, though, and it was hard to leave her warmth on cold mornings.

His mother and Splinter had returned during the night.  They were lying now on the other side of the room, facing each other on their sides, neither of them covered up.  While Splinter had laid out his mat with his normal perfect straightness, his mother’s was slanted at an angle, put down haphazardly. She had not even taken off her boots before obviously collapsing on her homemade mattress and konking out.  He shook his head, and walked over to the two of them.  Neither moved.  He picked up his mother’s blanket, and covered her with it, keeping her feet sticking out so the bottoms of her boots would not dirty the sheet.  He began to walk away, and the huffed gently.  Going back to the sleeping pair, he covered Splinter with his blanket.

He went into the large room, not wanting to wake anyone, looking forward to the first semblance of alone-ness he had experienced in months.  He knew exactly what he wanted to do with his time, but knew he would never live it down if he got caught.  He settled for taking a thick stick he’d brought down to The Burrow and began whittling it with his knife.

It was nice to see his mother doing something else other than fawning over Splinter.  It was nice to see her working, truly working, not pretending to work as she was doing here.  He knew she had been terribly disappointed on her very few clinics above ground, because she hadn’t found anyone treat.  She would now be busy for quite a long time, and maybe that would send Splinter on his way sooner.

He couldn’t decide how he felt about the rat.  Sometimes he liked the fellow alright enough.  He was calm, and Aries could feed off of that calm.  His mother, and he knew himself, were not like that.  Arcos must get very emotionally tired of being the one to have to bring everyone down from whatever peak they were on at the time.  He saw that his mother found Splinter calm also, and he assumed that was why she fawned over him in such a way.  Being stuck down here, in the stench and the dark, they all needed some calm.    Splinter had a presence very similar to hers when she was angry or being The Phoenix, only he had it all the time.  It was oddly comforting, when Aries was feeling very lonely.  It let him know that someone was there, that all of his little family around him were not mirages or dreams.  He knew he purposely got his mother angry sometimes just to feel that pressure she exerted on the air, something he could almost feel physically.  Splinter did it, and he remained calm in doing so.

Other times, he wanted to banish the rat from their existence.  It was never a slight feeling, it would overcome him, make his nostrils flare so that he had to get out of the room where Splinter was.  He wanted to reopen the slashes the rat had had his shoulder and ribs, taking his axe and bring down on each of the four, thin scars he was now forming.  He then wanted to throw him back in the sewer to die there.  How calm would he be then? 

He wanted to see blood on his sleeping mat, made especially for him by his mother’s hand.    His mother did nothing but hover over him like a moth to a flame.  She paid so little attention to them when they were there, and he felt he was not getting any attention at all.  Medusa got a fair amount of attention because she was a girl.  Arcos was sweet and accommodating, and that was rewarded with smiles and kisses.  Aries, he was always fixing things, or making things, and all that got him was a thank you.

He wanted her to watch the hurt he wanted to inflict on her patient.  He wanted her to hurt with the loss like he was.  Then, he wanted her to come to him for comfort.  He wanted to hold her, and stroke her hair, and press her against him to keep her safe.  He wanted her to stroke his ears and his muzzle, to ruffle his wool, and croon that he was her little Lamb’s Ear.

He wanted his Mama back.

Little bits of wood fell to the floor as he carved, soundless.

After he had finished with setting up the water purifier in the make shift aid post, and telling those he worked with how to maintain it, he’d had nothing left to do.  He wasn’t ready to go home.  He watched his mother for a while, and noticed the intense scrutiny that Splinter gave her.  It was intense, the same intensity with which his mother regarded her patients.   Aries didn’t like it, but he couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t like it.  As he’d told his siblings, the man had nothing else to do but watch them.  This task was probably a welcome reprieve, he had a job to do, even if was just to do whatever it was he was doing over there.

One of the mutants assigned to nurse the triage patients who were deemed too wounded to be dealt with until everyone else was, had asked him to come over.

Once over there, the tabby cat, Russe, had asked, “Do you know of any way to siphon the water over here?  The blood is getting everywhere…”

Aries chuckled.  “Buckets?” he suggested.

She gave him a sideways look.

“I’ll get you some water,” he winked.  He found a bucket, disinfected it, and began hauling water.  Bowls and pots were produced, and water poured in them.  “Have you disinfected them with the pine water first?”  Aries asked.

The four mutants that were there stared at him.

He sighed, “You have to disinfect them first…they’re full of bacteria.”

They looked around sheepishly, and then scurried off to do as he said.

Once they’d returned, he helped them begin to clean up.  The others began cleaning the floor, and he had to direct them to clean the people first.  “People are always more important than things,” he chanted.

“You know how to do this,” Russe said.  Her accent was think, she rolled her r’s, and her /th/ was a /zs/.

“You pick up a few things when you’re around someone who does it all the time,” he told her.

The five of them began to wipe up people, removing clothing and cleaning up matted and clotted hair. 

“Go get some pine water,” he told one of the mutants.  “We can start disinfecting the wounds.”

“We are going to waste disinfectant on them?” Russe asked, her face confused.

Aries shot her a dark look.  “Just because these people are badly injured doesn’t mean they don’t get treated.  When The Phoenix gets finished with everyone else, she’ll tend to these people.”

She stared at him.

“And you don’t say stuff like that where the people you’re talking about can hear it,” he huffed.

Russe looked away from him, obviously ashamed.

“Here,” he offered as an olive branch, “I’ll show what I’m doing.”  He was surprised by how much he knew, and pleased at how Russe picked up on it.  He saw now why his mother wanted to teach someone how to do this so badly.  Once the people had been dealt with, he brought over the large batch of plarn squares and showed them how to sew them together to make mats.

“How did you know how to do this?” Russe asked.  “To make these to get people off the floor?”

  “Necessity,” Aries answered. 

She smiled at him, “You know how to do things.”

He tilted his head and regarded her, his row of plarn squares, now a rectangle, in his hands.  “Some things,” he said quietly.

“Big things,” she said.  “You know how to make water clean.  You know how to make emergency beds.  You know how to help people who have been hurt.”

“A little,” he said.  “Anyone can learn.  I didn’t come up with any of this.  But thanks, Russe.”

She laughed at him saying her name.  It was a high pitched laugh, good-naturedly derisive, like his mother’s when she about to scold him for something wrong that she found funny.  “It is pronounced, Rooss” she said slowly.  She rolled the r and her oo had tight quality to it.

“Russe,” he tried again.  His r was in the back of his throat, unable to get his tongue to do much else.

“You say it with a French accent!” she laughed.

“Because I speak French,” he said. 

“You do?” she seemed surprised.

Do I look that dumb? He wondered, that someone is always surprised when they learn I know another language?  “Well, sort of,” he admitted.  “My mother says I’m awful at it.  But I can read it and understand it.”

“I do not speak anything but Russian and English,” she said.

“That’s one more language than most people,” he told her.

“How do you know French?” she asked.

“My mother speaks it,” he said.  “She taught us when we were about nine.” 

“Your mother, the Phoenix is your mother,” she said it more as an aside than anything else.

“That’s why were called The Children of the Phoenix,” he said with an amused look.

She chuckled, and put down the row of squares she’d sewn together, and began sewing several rows together.  “This goes fast.”

“This part does,” he told her.  “It’s the crocheting them that takes forever.”

“I know how to crochet,” she said. 

It was his turn to ask, “You do?”

“Everyone in Russia knows how to crochet.”

“Then I will teach you to make plarn,” he replied.  “And make you a crochet hook so you can make more.”

“I will be making a lot,” she looked around the room at all the people.

“Yes you will.  But they can be your crew to help you,” he motioned to the other three mutants who were now nurses/mat-makers.

Smiling, she continued on with her work, each of them getting up to help the wounded occasionally.

He finished with the crochet hook he was whittling, and began to straighten out plastic bags to cut them into loops.  As he began, he looked up and saw Splinter standing in front him.  He hadn’t even heard him come in, much less come right up to him.  “Good morning, sir,” he said in a surprised voice.

“Good morning,” he replied.  He sat down across from him, “I heard you rustling the bags, and saw you were the only one awake.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” Aires said quietly.

“You look troubled,” Splinter said.

The words startled Aries.  It was not something that the ram was expecting the rat to say.  “I am just thinking about all those people,” he said guardedly.  “And what has to be done to get them set up.”  Like finding them someplace else to go since you know where they are, he thought to himself.

“You have helped them much already,” Splinter put his hands in his lap.  That calm manner was lulling, Aries had to remind himself that this man was their enemy, no matter how calming his presence was.

“I did what I could,” he said.  “There is a lot more I could do.”

“You are the one who set up all of the things here,” Splinter looked around, to indicate the living systems he’d set up.  “The fresh water, and the sunlight.”

Aries nodded.  “Yeah…it was pretty dark in these rooms with only a lantern.”

“I can imagine,” Splinter replied.  “You are very industrious,” he noted.

Aires was silent for a moment.  “Thank you.”   Getting up, he said, “I can go into the other room while you do your morning…stuff.”

“Thank you,” Splinter replied, stand up and going to the little gym part of the room.

Aries walked back into the smaller space, and looked about at his siblings and mother sleeping.  A feeling of sulkiness came over him, and he walked over to his mother and lay on the floor next to her.  He didn’t fit on her mat, and ignored the cold concrete beneath him.  Spooning her as she lay on her side, facing Splinter’s sleeping spot, which was already rolled up and put away, he put his arm over her waist and pulled her into him.  He closed his eyes, smelling her hair of herbs and soap.  He knew she would not wake up for a good, long time, and he would take advantage of Splinter not being at her side while he could.

 

 

 


	74. Chapter 74

When Medusa woke up, she’d poked her up above Arcos to see where everyone else was.  They were all here, a flick of her tongue told her that.  She saw Aries cuddled with their mother, and wondered how long had been there.  Splinter must be in the other room, the thought, she could smell him, but not hear him at all.  It was disconcerting how she couldn’t hear or feel his movements. 

She closed her inner lid over her eyes, the world becoming a cloudy image of what she normally saw.  Lowering her head down to rest on Arcos so she could still see what was around her, she flicked her tongue again, the put it back in her mouth.

It was time for breakfast, and she was hungry.  With the weather warming up, albeit slowly, her appetite was returning, and she’d never had a small one.  She had to be careful not to smell too much when she was hungry.  Splinter smell delicious.

She liked the taste of rat.  She liked the taste of freshly laid eggs, too.  She errantly thought of what rat and eggs might taste like.  Splinter, while not smelling exactly like a rat, smelled ratty enough that her mouth salivated.  It wasn’t good to want to eat your houseguests.  It was even worse to know that if she wanted to eat him, she could.  She had yet to meet an opponent that could beat her.

She kept her tongue in her mouth, and breathed through her nostrils.

Arcos moved in his sleep, and she repositioned her body to accommodate him. 

The adrenaline of the day before had left her with a feeling of lethargy now, if not true tiredness.  She had slept off the exhaustion, and could very well be slow because of the cold.  It was still cold enough that she was never really warm, no matter what she was doing.  She was simply warm enough to be able to ignore the cold.

When they had heard that a group of mutants was near the inlet, her heart had soared.  All their hearts had, she knew they had.  Without a word, save a “Wait, Medusa!” they’d been off to find The Grey Cats.  It had to be the Grey Cats, what other group of mutants could it be?

They’d entered the junction to find a group of mutants that held not a single Grey Cat among them.

On seeing the devastation that the group had experienced, the memory of The Battle of the Pretty Building came back to her in full force, so that she had to push it away hard before it overwhelmed her.

After coming back home from dealing with this new resistance group, she and her brothers had all sunk onto their shared mat, and slept.  Aries snoring woke her up at some point, so that she jostled him to make him stop.  Without waking, the ram had repositioned himself, his noisy breathing coming to a halt.  Looking about the room, she saw that her mother and Splinter had not yet returned.  She felt a pang at assuring Sparks that the two of them would be fine without her and her brothers, but easily swept it away.  If Splinter was going to do try and do something to any of them, he would have done so by now.  She’d then had a hard time falling back to sleep.  She was tired, but awake enough that the thoughts she’d cut off earlier could make their way back into her consciousness.

She had been so hurt at Razz after that battle, that he had acted the way that he had.  If she’d known that she would have only such a short time with him, perhaps she would have allowed him talk with her sooner.  After talking with him, she’d felt so lightened that she promised she would never put herself in that kind of limbo again.  She would have someone, or she would dismiss them utterly. 

Now Razz was gone, and not because of anything she had done.  He was gone in a vortex of an alien invasion, lost somewhere in this city, or lost to this world altogether.  In the middle of the night, tired and thoughtful, with only her two brothers with her, she tucked her head into body coils, and fought back tears.

She was not a crier by nature.  When she cried, it tended it be long and hard, unlike her mother and Aries, both of whom could turn on and off the water works at will, it seemed to her.  Who gets only two tears out of their eyes before stopping?  Crocodile tears, she had told him once when they were younger.  That had earned her a thrashing from the ram, and then a spanking from her mother, both of whom asserted they were not fake in the least.

In the dark of this night, though, she fighting them back was hard, without fighting back the memory of her best friend.   She missed Razz so much.  Wrapping herself around him was different than wrapping herself around anyone else.  Like hers his body temperature was not constant, she could not guarantee a slightly warm or a very hot body.  He was leaner than her brothers, and had the slightly spicy smell of a reptile.  She remembered how she would put her head on top of his, her nose coming along his like a bed sheet laid on a bed, and her fangs straddling his muzzle.   She knew the gesture, while appreciated for its familiarity, was unsettling to him.  She could crush him like a bug, or pierce his body right though with little effort, and the gesture was a blatant reminder of that.  He had told her once that she needed use such displays on him, that he was well aware she was physically stronger than him.  She had tried to explain that it had nothing to do with a display of who was stronger.  It made her feel good to do it, not in a mean way.  It made her feel protective of him, that she could wrap in him a Medusa-cocoon and keep him safe from harm.  The move was always accompanied by a smile on her part, for it was a totally pleasant thing for her to do.  He had no understood her explanation and that made it so clear in so many ways the differences between The Children of the Phoenix and The Grey Cats.

But that didn’t make her miss him any less.

Unlike her brothers, she had a comradery with him that was easy and unencumbered by a jockeying for position.   Mama had said it was because she didn’t live with him, but she didn’t think so.  They just seemed to be able to think the same kinds of thoughts, and talk about the same kinds of things.  If she wanted to tell him all about a romance novel she’d read, he would listen intently, and comment on things he thought.  If he wanted to talk about fighting, or how one of the other Grey Cats was eyeing spot higher up on the totem pole, closer to Chategris, she would listen.   Together, they talked about her brothers and her mother, about Chategris and Klashtooth, about the state of the world and the state of their worlds in particular.

She remembered them draped on a ledge of a high rise business building, the two of them popping warm pigeon eggs in their mouths.  The air was just getting chilly at night, and the moon was a gibbous waxing, and the light of it shined down on the top of his head, while the light of the streets below played shadows on his chin. 

He had been looking at her with a concentrated look, a slight smile on his reptilian face.  “I know what I am going to get you for your birthday next year,” he said.

“Why would you start getting me things for my birthday?” she had asked.  “All of you always give us a dance party.”

“I will give you something else, too,” he said.  His look turned playful.  “And I will give you a gift every birthday you have from now on.”

She had shaken her head, a smile on her lips, but her mind whirling.  If he was going to give her a gift for her next birthday, she had to find something to get him for his birthday.  His next birthday was before her birthday, so she had to think of something before then.  What did one get another for their birthday?  On TV, people always got big gifts from fancy department stores, or dinners out, or new clothes.  None of those things would work for a single soul she knew.  She realized she had no idea what she could get Razz for his birthday.

“You don’t have to get me anything,” she said.  If he got her nothing, then she wouldn’t have to think of a gift to give him.

“But I want to give you something,” he said, with a tone in his voice she’d never heard before.  It had sent a shiver through her.

The shiver she repressed now, however, was not just from the cold of the room, she knew.

Yesterday, the cold had been ignored all day.  She had been the runner for anything too heavy for many of the others to handle.  A goose mutant, Anser, whose wings were more like arms with feathers on them, reminding her of an archaeopteryx, had begun to help her move things.  His long, elegant neck, and his thin legs belied a body strength that impressed her.  The two of them were able to carry anything that the group needed.

Afterward, she’d curled up and rested a while, watching the world around her.  Aries had found a woman to talk to, of course.  The red tabby cat Russe, and he were dealing with the triage patients, wiping their wounds and cleaning the floor.  Arcos and she had parted ways once The Burrow was emptied out of what they could spare, with him going to find tarps and haul water, and she to lift heavy stuff that this new group of mutants needed to survive.  People were lying all over the place, those who were hurt were out flat on the floor, and those who were not were next to the walls and in the corners snoozing while they could.

A chipmunk mutant, a small thing, perhaps only three feet tall, was holding and refilling bowls of disinfectant for her mother.  He dozed on the floor near the operating table in between patients, and then scurried to do The Phoenix’s bidding when she finished. 

Phoenix worked on the mutants in front of her the way she had with the Grey Cats, not seeming to get tired.  She saw her stop occasionally and think, and she knew she was going through her mind all of the relevant information she could draw on for that specific species of animal under her care.  Then she’d set to work again.

Splinter stood over her, like a bodyguard.  He watched her like a hawk watched its prey, and she knew that her brothers were wrong.  She already knew they were wrong about their mother.  She might never have been in love, but she’d read enough about it, despite her mother’s warning that real life love was not like a romance novel.

Her mother was in love this mutant.

She was not unaware of the way she looked at him, the way she cared for him, the way she seemed to crave his company.  She’d never acted this way with anyone they’d ever known.   They spoke in a way to each other that it sounded like it came out of an old movie, their voices annunciating each word with precision, despite his accent and her quickness of speech.  Their body movements were of a politeness that Medusa hadn’t seen, but only read about in books.  Her mother had items waiting for him, as if the two of them had talked about what their roles would be at each juncture of each activity.   At meal times, she seemed to revel in the ritual of a proper dinner, actually enacting the rules of politeness that she’d physically hammered into them when they were young.  She rejoiced in the manners the rat had, and was able to show off her own.  Medusa had never seen anything like it, but then, her mother had never had a chance to do it before, had she?

For his part, Splinter seemed to be playing his part in this strange production with just as much expertise.   He spoke with an exactness that was only made more acute by his reserved speech.   He moved with an unearthly grace, like someone who wasn’t totally on the physical plane, someone who had been digitally altered by the computers to be displayed upon a screen.  He accepted his mother’s attention with no disagreements, and sometimes Medusa was under the impression that he was waiting for her to finish whatever it was she was doing so she would come over to him.  She didn’t know why she had such an idea, the rat didn’t make any shifts in his appearance or his demeanor that she could tell.  But there seemed to be an air of expectance around him, though, when she came to the end of an activity, and rejoined him in whatever it was they were doing.

She was not entirely unsure that he was not in love with her mother.


	75. Chapter 75

Arcos felt Medusa stir underneath him, and reached for Aries, to steal back the covers.  He didn’t feel him, but found the sheet, and pulled it over he and his sister, nuzzling deeper into her coils to warm himself, and consequently, her.

He had slept fitfully during the night.  He blamed it on Medusa, she kept shifting.  She usually did that when she had trouble sleeping.  He didn’t know why she would have trouble sleeping, she should be exhausted, she’d carried tons, probably literally, of heavy things down into the junction that now housed the group of mutants who were recuperating.

When they arrived at the junction, he was sure it was The Grey Cats.  Or what was probably left of the Grey Cats.  But it hadn’t been, and it had hit him in the chest like a punch.

He missed them.  All of them.  Even the nasty ones.  Even the curmudgeonly ones.  Even the pathetic ones.  Even jack ass Chategris.  He missed the girls, he missed the boys, he missed the ones that he couldn’t tell what gender they were.

The Inleters, he had begun to refer to this new group in his head.  He had thought himself amusing at first, the word making him thing of The Dubliners.  But then he’d realized that was dumb, and was glad he hadn’t told anyone about that connection.

The Inleters didn’t have a cohesiveness to them, he had noticed.  No one seemed to have filled any positions, putting their talents to use where they might best fit.  He found that odd, why wouldn’t someone strong, like Medusa, start bringing in heavy stuff?  Why wouldn’t someone who knew how to fix things, like Aries, start making the things they’d need to survive in a new place?  Even he, when all he could really do was make pretty things, could do what he was told, could look around a place and think, “We need a…” and then go get it.

In fact, that is what he’d relegated himself to doing while they were at the junction.  It hadn’t taken long to get things from The Burrow, so afterward he’d taken two of the unhurt Inleters topside with him to fetch some tarps.  They’d only found three of them, but three was better than nothing.  Both mutants were reptiles of some sort, he didn’t know what kind.  He was sure his mother would be able to identify them, Medusa probably could too.  He couldn’t recall either of their names, his thoughts being on more important things.  They had wanted to go back to their previous place, and gather items.

“Are you crazy?” Arcos looked at the two of them in turn.  “Do you want to end up like the rest of your crew down there,” he motioned vaguely at the ground.

“No,” replied one of them, a woman who was a collection of pale greens and cream, with a slight rose at her throat.  “But all of our stuff is there.”

“You can get more stuff,” Arcos told her.  “And you will get more stuff.  That’s what we’re doing now, getting more stuff.” 

“We have to completely rebuild our living quarters,” said the second one.  He was small and a dappled gray, difficult to see in the surrounding gray of the city.  “We’ve had to do it once already.”

“Yes,” Arcos’ grizzly voice was gruff.  “Suck it up.  You’ll probably be doing it again.”

They’d dumpster dived, away from any kind of civilization.  Arcos steered them away from anything smelling anything like it might be self-conscious.  The pickings were slim, those who were still surviving on their wits in the city having already been through many of the places they visited.  They eventually headed back underground to comb the surrounding sewers for usable items.

Luckily for the Inleters, this section of the underground hadn’t yet been utilized by any kind of resistance.  They found a broken metal folding chair, three wooden pallets that still had some wood that was usable, and a great deal of coffee cans.  It never ceased to amaze Arcos, even after all these months, how much stuff was under the city.  How did it get down here, anyway?

Coming back to the junction, he had the two lizards wash and disinfect coffee cans.  “Scrub them good with the pine water,” he instructed, “and then rinse them with fresh water.  Put them in a clean corner to dry.  You’ll need them for something, I’m sure.”

“You like pine, don’t you?” the female had asked.

“No,” he answered.  “I like coffee.”

She smiled, the first time she’d done so in his presence.  Probably the first time she had since this whole fiasco for them began.

He had helped to clean then, starting in a corner, and scraping the walls.  The ceiling was very high, and unless grime started falling from it, he doubted it would get cleaned.

The measured regularity of the scraping gave him time to think.  He wished he had something more involved to do, to keep his mind busy, rather than his thoughts drifting to the Grey Cats.

He had always derided Aries on his flitting from girl to girl, and his regularity with which he took a girl to bed.  It seemed to him rather sloppy, not choosing someone to stay with, and doing something else besides sleeping with them.  But now, without having the option of a bed partner, he wanted one.  He hadn’t even thought of it until he was so sure these people would be his friends, been found after having disappeared like fog in the morning. 

He wanted to fight.  He wanted to make love.  He wanted to smoke.  He wanted to drink.  He wanted to do the things that he’d always participated in, but then looked down on others for doing.  He didn’t particularly care where he did it, just so long as he did, and he did with his friends.

He didn’t even know if any of them were alive.  He missed Crevan and Razz more than he thought would.   He rarely thought of either of them before, unless he wanted something specific, usually just wanting something alleviate his boredom.  If he was going to contemplate someone, it was the members of his family. 

He considered what both Medusa and Aries had said about their mother and Splinter, and decided Aries had the better case.  Splinter was novel, he seemed to fill some sort of need for his mother that obviously hadn’t been filled by anyone else she knew.  He didn’t think it was romantic.  They barely touched each other.  When anyone else he knew had romantic intentions, they were all over each other.  Splinter was a male, after all, he’d even cracked a smile when Aries had accidently tried to make Arcos’ genitalia inoperative.   If he was interested in his mother, he would have made some sort of move after all this time sequestered with them.  It wasn’t like he didn’t have the chance.  Lots of chances.  Unless something had happened while the three of them were gone, he hadn’t taken any of them.

He stood over his mother now, watching her attentively as she worked.  Maybe he was monk, and that was why he was so interested in what she was doing.  Didn’t monks help heal people?  Maybe that was why he wore that robe.  What had he called it?  He couldn’t remember, something Asian.  He watched her with a stern look on his face.  Not that he didn’t always have a stern look on his face, but this one was austere in another way.  Almost as if his mother were the only thing in front of him, not the patient, not the chipmunk at their side, not Sparks, who flittered around the table in between repeating orders that his mother gave him.  He’d never seen the look on the rat’s face before.

As for this mother, he didn’t think she was interested in Splinter romantically either.  Why would she be attracted to a rat?  They were all freaks, and she was human being.  She would want a human being.  That is why she’d pushed Chategris’ attentions away for the past ten years.  Everybody knew it.  A mutant wasn’t good enough for La Medicienne, or The Phoenix.  She was human, and that made her more ‘particular’ than the rest of them.   She restrained from touching Splinter also, he’d noticed.  She must know that he was a lackey of The Rat King.  She would know better than any of the rest of them.  He still wondered what happened when she’d been kidnapped.  She had been wary, almost afraid, of rats for quite a while afterward. No, with this man, she was just tending to a patient.  The woman had nothing else to do, just as the rat had nothing else to do than watch them all.  It was as boring as a hole in the Burrow.

His boredom would have taken him to Crevan, or the girl he was fancying at the time, if they were still at the Haunted Warehouse.  He recalled a time when he, Aries, and Crevan were alone on a roof, drinking beer that the fox had procured somehow, both he and his brother knowing it was not in an honest fashion, all of them buzzed beneath the cloudy night. 

“You two owe me for the beer,” Crevan pointed at Arcos with his bottle.

“Yeah, I know,” the bear replied.

“You can get us some of that weed that your mom makes,” he said.

“That stuff she makes Chategris?” Arcos asked.

“Yeah.”

“You got someone lined up for the next few days?” Aires teased. 

The fox furrowed his brow.  “What do you mean?”

“It gives you a buzz on the day you smoke it,” the ram explained.  “It gives you blue balls for three days after that.”

“That’s how Mama gets back at you all for taking drugs,” Arcos chuckled.

“You’re joking?” Crevan leaned forward.

Both boys shook their heads.  “Nope.”

“Daaammmnnnn,” the fox drawled.  “That’s low.”

“Who said we didn’t do low?” Aries asked.

“I figured you were all too particular to do low.”

“We do low,” Arcos said.  “We just do it with class.”

Crevan had thrown his head back and laughed.  “Good one, Big Brother.”

He missed the silver fox’s company, his nickname of “Big Brother.”  Crevan would probably have been part of his family now if Ailurosa was still alive.

How would his dead sister take this change in their lives?  What would she think of the rat?  She probably wouldn’t like him, she was a cat, after all.  She and Aries would be at each other’s throats, just like when they were kids.  The two of them were too alike, both volatile and emotional.

His eyes went to Aries, and he shook his head.  Count on the ram to be talking a woman as soon as he had the chance.  He didn’t have any illusions that Russe would soon fall under the charming ram’s spell, and end up somewhere alone in the sewer with him.  He was surprised, however, to see Aries tending to people.  He wiped blood from wounds, and unmatted fur from the mutants lying in triage.  He looked up at Russe angrily for a moment, then his face changed back into his normal, amicable self.  Aries playing nurse, who’d a thunk it?

Medusa was not in the junction for any real length of time.  She was gone, would come back with something heavy—a barrel, an electrical wire reel, a couch.  At least he didn’t have to hear her complain about being cold.  That was getting old.  She was always cold.  And whining.  Unless she was fighting, then she was trying to be coy.  Maybe she missed fighting, and loving, and drinking, and smoking, too.  Maybe she did all those things with Razz, and none of them knew.

He had come back to The Burrow and promptly fell asleep on his sister.   Now, at whatever time it was, after a brief spin with his thoughts, sleep overcame him again, until Medusa decided to jostle him once more.  Hopefully it would be a while before she did.

 


	76. Chapter 76

The Phoenix felt a warmth at her back, and was surprised that the night had warmed up so much.  As she awoke, she recognized the shape of the warmth behind her, that it was Aries.  He must have come to cuddle with her sometime in the night.  Aww, she thought through her closed eyes, my baby.

She opened them slowly and saw that Splinter was not next to her.  She glanced at the little quilted mat, and saw that the picture of the Turtles was gone.

No! she thought.  No, no, no!  He can’t be gone.

She took a deep breath to calm herself, her heart was beating a mile a minute.  Fear grabbed her, trying to keep her on her sleeping mat, wrapped up in her son.  With effort, she rolled out from Aires arm, and he opened his eyes.  “Redormis, mon agneau,” <Go back to sleep, my lamb> she said.  Aries closed his eyes slowly.

She crept over him, and then made a mad dash to the larger room.  He couldn’t be gone.  She wasn’t ready for him to be gone.  She had to prepare before he left.  She hadn’t prepared yet, she hadn’t gotten herself ready for his absence.  Please don’t let him be gone, she prayed, please.  I’m not ready yet.  Just a little while longer.  Please!

Reaching the other room, she saw him sitting on a makeshift seat of pallets.  His head was down, and his back was utterly straight.  He was utterly still, a fine statue in the midst of debris gathered from dumpsters and the sewers, she could not even see him breathing.  The room matched him, no sound and no movement penetrated the space.

The expected rush of relief did not come to her, and tears came to her eyes.  He’s leaving, she thought in a panic.  He’s getting ready to leave.   A gross drawing came from her solar plexus toward him, like a silver cord was attached to him and being pulled.

She felt as if her heart was breaking in two, a fissure which had only been a hairline fracture, cracking open. 

It reminded her, errantly, of her first little love, at 13.  William Bentfy was his name, a boy who lived in her grandmother’s neighborhood.  He was a playmate of her and her cousins when they came to visit Mamere in the winters, a welcoming break from tutors and gymnastics.  He’d been her first crush, her first kiss, her first love.  They’d written letters for two years, spending the winters together, until the summer of her fifteenth year, when he’d written that didn’t love her anymore.  She had cried for days and days, so that her coach’s wife had had to take her out for ice cream and tell her this was going to happen to her again, and again, so she ought to get over it.  She had gotten over it, it was just a first little love, after all.  But it hadn’t happened to her again.  Stephane had been the next boy she’d been involved with, and then she had died. 

Now it was happening again, only this time she wasn’t 13, and she hadn’t died.  This time it was her enemy, most likely someone aligned with a madman, someone who she knew she would have to defeat one day, that her family would have to defeat one day, and that they had little chance of defeating, that was doing this to her, and she felt she had no recourse.  Like time slipping away, half of her heart had already left her, without her permission, and he would take it with him when he left.

He turned his head, all she saw was the inside of his ear, part of his muzzle, and one of his eyes.   She was struck by the beautiful color of it, amber with streaks of brown starring from his pupil.

“I thought you—“ her breath was coming in gasps, and she had to stop and blink hard.  Her voice didn’t want to come out.  “I didn’t know where you were,” she managed to say.

He turned away from her again, and said, “I am here.”

The words hung in the air, like a tattered windsock on a calm day.  Her breath was still ragged, and she walked over to him, trying to make her footfalls soft with her boots, to not wake anyone up.  She turned the corner of the makeshift bench to face him, and saw he held the photo of his sons in his hands, resting the bottom edge of the frame in his lap.

Her breath stuck in her throat, and her tears began to fall in earnest.  The loss she imagined he must be feeling grabbed her and squeezed, bringing forth a vision of Ailurosa in her arms.  She could feel the weight of the child as she carried her, the stickiness of her drying blood, the anguish that had engulfed her for so long, until the firebird had come and burned it away.  He must be feeling the same thing, she moaned in her head.

 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.

I will keep him safe, her voice in her head was harsh and determined.

He looked up at her, his own eyes shining.  The look on his face was so expressive, a look of suffering like none she’d ever seen before, and it took her by surprise.

“Oh Splinter!” she breathed.

***

 Splinter had stopped his morning practice when he felt a fever coming on.  He fought back annoyance with his body and sat down.  He took out the photo of his sons he had picked up when he had awoken that morning and looked down at it.  He had each detail in it etched in his brain, if he ever lost it, he would have iota of it in his memory. 

He had felt fine when he’d awoken, hearing the rustling of plastic coming from the larger room and seeing Aries was not with his brother and sister.  His mother was lying on her mat, which she’d laid down skewed and collapsed upon.  Her hair was strewn about her haphazardly and her mouth was slightly open, like a baby’s.  He turned to look at his photograph, as he did every morning upon waking, and felt his heart lurch.  He reached for it, and tucked it in his yakata before going into the larger room.

Aries hadn’t even looked up when he’d walked over to him.  He suspected the ram hadn’t known he was there, for his “Good morning, sir,” was in a surprised voice.

He had noted that he looked troubled.  He didn’t know why he did, perhaps it was because of his own troubled feelings, or perhaps it was because it was what he would say to one of his own sons if they looked the way Aries had.  He was relieved when the ram left him alone.

He was able to clear his head while in practice, but then he felt the fevered heat coming on, and had sat back down.

His sons were out there somewhere, trying to survive.  How well were they doing it, he didn’t know.  He only knew his boys, not yet men, were out in a world taken over by madmen and aliens without him.  A feeling of intense longing and defeat came over him, making him tear up.  His sons were gone, and he was in little position to find them.

He heard Phoenix enter the room, and felt her presence push against his only shortly thereafter.  He felt her eyes on him long moments, her breath sounding panicked.  “I thought—“ she said.  What did she think?  What did he care what she thought?  But he did care, and that made the feeling of defeat even greater.  He cared a great deal, even if he didn’t want to.  Watching her yesterday was like watching a great master in his youth, doing something amazing that he only understood intellectually and was yet unable to embody it.  He knew that people could do what she did.  There were many legends in every culture of people doing it.  But it was one thing to hear a legend, and quite another to witness it, no matter the medium.  Is this what people saw when they watched him?  It had been so long since he had seen anything like that.

He never would have thought that such power, spiritual power, power of presence, could come from that little golden thing that stood behind him, who sounded afraid simply with her breath.

He turned to look at her, only his head.  He could see her out of only one eye, her hair disheveled, her clothes rumpled.  Her corset, which she usually removed before bed, was a little askew, so that the lacing was settled slightly to the left.

“I didn’t know where you were,” her voice was strangled.

The words made him nauseous, and he turned from her heart sick.  “I am here.”  He heard the defeat in his voice when he said it.

She walked over and stood in front of him, looking down with a look of compassion, he knew.  When he looked up, he was surprised it see it was not compassion, but of a determination, as if she was going to plow through something.  But the moment she looked into his eyes, the looked changed to the one he was expecting, and she exhaled, “Oh Splinter!” with tears running down her face.

He knew she was going to move, that did not surprise him.  It was what the movement itself that did.  She bent over and took his head in her hands and pressed it to her chest, her body heaving as she did so.  She laid her cheek in between his ears and breathily sobbed, “I am so sorry,” the exclamation was voiceless and violent.  “I am so sorry for everything!”

She let out another sob, and he felt wetness on his head.  He could bring himself to do nothing, simply to sit there, holding the picture in his hands, the bottom of the frame resting on his lap.  The position he was in caused her to have to lean to hold him, but that didn’t deter her, she kept her arms about him and continued to cry.

Words that his father had once told him came to his mind, “We choose what holds us back and what moves us forward.”  The words were in his voice, he had said them to his own sons, he was sure of it.  It could have been at any time, many were the maxims he repeated to them.  However, words unbidden always meant something important, and he always paid them heed.

He had conquered his fears long ago, he had wrestled with the new ones that emerged and defeated them.  Now, in his weakened state, for he was sure that is what it was, the feeling of being defeated engulfed him.

“You have a fever,” Phoenix whispered through her sobs, and he felt the gathering of heat from where her hands lay on the side and back of his head.

“Do not,” his own voice was choked.  He didn’t want what she let in, he didn’t want to feel anything of hers.  What he felt of his own was strong enough.

“Please,” her voice was imploring, “let me.”

He didn’t answer her.  The heat stayed only in her hands, warming up as if gathering to burn him at her fingertips.  It suddenly occurred to him that he had not been comforted by another person in over 16 years.  He had lost everything, all those whom he loved, who would have comforted him.  He had fled to New York City, alone and afraid.  He had raised his four sons, the only source of comfort for any of them being him.  They couldn’t offer him comfort, they didn’t know how to offer him the comfort he would have needed. 

“Let him mend his soul,” Leondardo had told his brothers when he grappled with Miwa’s mutation.  After finding something precious, he lost it so soon, he had been a sea with defeat, with no comfort in sight but what he could give himself.

Why could he not accept comfort from someone he had found worthy of giving it?

He parted his knees, put his arms about her, and pull her to him in one motion, so quickly that she gave a small gasp through her crying.  She was able to reposition her cheek on the back of his head, and tuck the rest of it under her chin.  He still held the photo of his sons in his hand, his arm about her lower back, his other hand at her shoulder blades.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered again, the heat from her hands seeping into his body and spreading to his chest.   “I would take it all away if I could.”

He believed her.  Whatever ‘it’ was she referred to, he believed she would take whatever pain it was away if she could.

A feeling of loss almost overwhelmed him, loss that didn’t belong to him, but to her.  How was he to heal when had to deal with emotions that weren’t his?  How was he to deal with his own feelings of defeat, with his own weakened body, when she assaulted him like this, with feelings that did not belong to him?  Whatever loss she felt, he knew it was nothing compared to his own, to losing his brother to jealousy, losing his wife, losing his daughter, not once, but twice, losing all of his family, losing his entire clan, losing his home, again not once, but twice, and now losing his sons.  He knew her loss was nothing compared to all of that.  But he did not want her feel it, whatever it was she had lost.    

The loss swept through him and away, and was replaced by a grasping feeling, like one holding on for dear life to some treasure they had found quite by accident.  It was so intimate, he could not tell if it belonged to him or if it belonged to her. 

Possessiveness grabbed at his gut, he didn’t know who it belonged to, but it was so strong he reached for it firmly and held it with a vice-like grip.  Phoenix gasped again through her soft sobs and tightened her hold on him, pressing her cheek into his head and his head into her chest.  He simply held onto the feeling of ‘mine’, listened her to her heart beat and the strong breaths wave in and out of her lungs, and allowed himself to be comforted in a way that now felt foreign to him.


	77. Chapter 77

Splinter held onto the feral feeling of mine that simmered in his gut, or was it hers?  He gripped it with a rising fury that made his body heat.  It felt as if a fire had started in his head, and was slowly dripping down the rest of him, like hot coals through a grate.

“Splinter, your fever,” Phoenix whispered, but she didn’t move from her position of holding his head to her breast, and her cheek resting in between his ears.  The wetness from her tears on his fur seemed to him to steam, ricocheting the heat coming off of his body back down into him.

He felt a wave of anxiety flow through him, it wasn’t his, it was wholly hers.  It was mixed with fear and desire, and it pulled at his grasp, as if in a tug of war with him to take from him all he had left, this feeling of heat and his.  Then her loss weaved its way through him, the feeling of losing, and losing again, of wanting and wanting riding the rising heat in his body.

He pulled back on it, and as he did, in his mind’s eye, like a slideshow, he saw his Tang Shen, his Miwa, his home, his passport, his Leonardo, his Raphael, his Donatello, his Michaelangelo, his Karai- a girl, his Karai-a mutant, his Lair.  The smell of fire and smoke, and the ozone of mechanical laser fire engulfed the images, and they started all over again, going over in his mind faster and faster. 

He grasped at the feeling he had before, of possessiveness, of having something that was his, and tore it from wherever it was lodged to take it for him, only him, to be his.

He heard Phoenix give a strangled cry, almost like a gag, and her arms let go of him, her head lifted from his, but still the heat from his body rose, until he screamed in a voice that was not entirely his own, and the shuttering images of all that no longer belonged to him stopped.

***

Aries heard an animalistic scream come from the other room and shot up.  He put his hand down on the ground, farther away from his body than he normally would expecting his mother to be wrapped against him, but she wasn’t.   He ran to the other room, to see his mother crashing into shelf of canned goods and Splinter standing with his fists in the air, letting out an eerie cry.  In one of his fists was a chunk of his mother’s long, golden hair.

The ram lowered his head and ran toward the rat.  It was an instinctive move, one that needed no thought.  He felt himself make contact with Splinter, but it was light.  It struck him how hot the contact was, almost as if he was running though a gush of steaming air.  Confused for a moment, he felt the rat on all fours on top of him, and then leap off, his claws tearing into the small of his back.  Aries head hit the concrete of the opposite wall.

Medusa and Arcos came into the room, both on either side of Splinter.  The rat remained on all fours, and chomped his mouth at Arcos, who was closest to him.  The bear raised his sledgehammer, and brought it down at Splinter came at him.

At the same time Medusa cracked her whip, and caught the rat by the belt.  In a fluid motion she wrapped the bottom of her tail around her whip and tugged it.  The belt ripped off, bringing Splinter backwards just enough that Arcos’ sledgehammer missed him.

“What d’you do that for?” Arcos cried, repositioning himself from his miss.  “I almost had him.”

“That’s not what it was supposed to do,” Medusa answered, darting to another part of the room for a better vantage point.

“Stop!” Phoenix was up, and limping slightly, coming toward them, a commanding look on her face.  She brought her hand to her shoulder, where the shirt was torn, three gashes slowly changing the pale blue to crimson.

Arcos raised his hammer for another strike, “What’s the matter with him?”

Splinter hissed, a sound that started all four of them, and then leapt toward Phoenix, as if sensing she was the easiest target of the four.  She sidestepped his jump clumsily, and he fell and rolled, wrapped up his unfastened kimono.  He growled and began to tear at it, until it was in shreds all around him, pieces of scarlet on the dark concrete floor. 

Aries let out a great huff, his head still down, and ran toward the rat.  Splinter twisted out of his way, but Aries was able to get in a crosswise blow by butting his head to the side.  He hit the rat with the side of his horns, sending him skitting across the floor.

Splinter hissed, and then turned down the tunnel and ran off on all fours, his tail flicking as he went.

The Burrow was deathly silent.  Even the sound of their breathing was muffled through the pounding of blood in their ears.

“It’s time to go,” Arcos’ voice came through the haze in Phoenix’s mind. 

She looked up at him, holding his sledgehammer in his hand, and then down at the bits of kimono that littered the floor.  Little shiny sharp things, the things she’d never been able to identify, and hadn’t the courage to ask what they were, lay scattered among the shreds of scarlet and the cans that fell off the shelf. 

She wasn’t sure what happened…She had been holding him, leading the little golden ants into his body to go wherever it was they would go to heal his hurt, but his fever just kept getting higher and higher no matter how many of the little golden ants she sent into him.  The tears she’s shed on her his fur got hotter, and not cooler, so her cheek started to burn slightly.

He was gripping her tightly to him, she could feel him breathe in and out against her, the rise and fall of his chest, the warm and cold of his breath at her breast.  She was waiting to feel wetness on her shoulder, surely he would begin to cry also, she could not hold her own tears back.  His arms got tighter and tighter around her, and it felt good to be held so close, and so possessively by him _._

Then it felt as if some ghostly hand had reached inside of her gut, grabbed a hold of something inside of her, attached to her, and ripped it out through her stomach.  The pain of it, a sort of ethereal pain that didn’t really reside in her body, but somewhere else, made her try to cry out, but she couldn’t get the sound to come out properly.   She let go of him reflexively, in an attempt to breath, and he’d begun to scream.

It sounded like an animal in pain, and ripped through her with the same intensity that the ghostly hand had ripped out whatever it had grabbed onto inside of her.

Before she could even say his name, she felt his hand grip at her hair at the base of her neck.  She heard a clunk as the photo he held dropped to the ground, and his hand came to her shoulder.  He dug his claws into her just above her breast, and then flung her across the room.  She heard her own skin ripping as a chunk of her hair was pulled out, and felt the sting of the deep gashes as his claws raked from her breast to the curve of her shoulder.  Her body slammed into the metal cans on the shelf that Aries had built and she felt many of them fall on top of her, like rocks in a landslide.

Then they were all fighting each other, a beast where a refined, dignified being once stood squaring off against her children, beastly in their own way.

She failed.  She failed miserably.  She had not kept him safe.  

“What if he comes back?” her voice was forlorn.

“That’s why we have to go,” Arcos said.

She looked up at him again, trying to gather her thoughts.  “But what if he comes back and he needs help?”

“What if he comes back and doesn’t need help?” Aries said.  “Or he brings other people with him?”

“He’s sick…”

“He’s been sick, Mama,” Medusa said gently.

There was silence again in the room as Phoenix looked toward the exit tunnel.  She had promised to keep him safe.  Now he was running around the sewer somewhere, like a monster from a bad horror film, in only the wrappings that she’d peeled off of him, covered in the nastiness of sewage, washed gently, and then given back to him when she’d deemed he could get up.  All that was left of his yukata was in shreds on the floor.  She failed to keep him safe.

“Time to go, Mama,” he said again, his voice firm.  He walked over to her and grabbed her arm to pull her with him.

She slapped his paw, like she did when they were tiny and she did not want them touching something.  He snatched it away surprised.   “We go when I say we go,” she snapped.

He disconcertedly blinked at her a few times, and took a deep breath.  “We can’t stay here,” he said in a gentler tone of voice.  “We have to go.”

“We can’t wait for him to come back,” Medusa’s voice was still soft.

“His fever was so high,” Phoenix’s voice began to sound less distant.  “It must have been over 104…”  She had been remiss.  She’d kept him up and working for an entire day.  How much had he to drink while she was playing doctor?  Anything?  She hadn’t given him any medicine when they’d gotten back to The Burrow.  They had both just collapsed.  She hadn’t fed him, good god, when was the last time they’d eaten?  More than 24 hours ago!  She failed.

“Which means he won’t be making compassionate decisions, Mama.”  Medusa’s voice hissed slightly at her ses.   “He’ll run back to his people, and then he will lead his people here.”

“You’re hurt Mama,” Aries came over to her, and motioned to her shoulder.

She looked down at it absently, the three gashes were still bleeding.  My shirt is ruined, she thought, her brain much calmer than her body felt.  The pause was over.  The Universe had pressed play and now the small bit of delight she’d garnered from Splinter’s presence was gone.  She knew it would be.  The Universe had given her plenty of signs that it would be sooner rather than later.  She’d awoken, sure that he was gone, and she’d gotten to hold him in a way she’d not been able to before…whatever it was that had happened to him.  She should be grateful.  She wasn’t.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, in her mother’s voice that broached no retorts.  “Come on,” she began walking toward the little room, stroking Medusa’s shoulder as she passed her, “Arcos is right.  We can’t stay here.”

The kids followed her into the smaller room.  She took her knife, slingshot, and bag of bullets from where they rested, and Aries got his ax.  “Is there anything we need to take with us?” she asked, “Since we have the chance?”

Aries went over to the pile of bags that they had brought back from their foraging, “We can take these,” he suggested. “It gives us some supplies.”

Each of them took their share of the plastic grocery bags, and headed toward the port door.

“Down the hatch,” Arcos said, jumping into it and sliding down.

Phoenix motioned the other two to go down before her.  Aries obliged, but Medusa shook her head.

“I go last,” she said.  “That’s the plan.”

Phoenix looked at her daughter for a long moment, and leaned up and kissed her.

“It’s not your fault, Mama,” Medusa told her, staying close to her face.  “None of this is your fault.  It is just what happened.”

Phoenix nodded, and slid down the tunnel.

At the bottom, it was lit with a lantern.  “You have a crank lamp down here?” she asked incredulously.

Aries smiled and cranked it some more.  “You don’t think I’d come unprepared, do you?”

She reached up and put her hand to his cheek.  The motion made her wince as her should her hurt.  “No,” she said.  “You are prepared, if you are nothing else.”

“Move out of the way,” Aries gently guided her to the side of the entry hole.  “Medusa is coming down.”

Just as her daughter’s head poked through, there was a soft “pow” noise, followed by a loud crashing.  Phoenix cried out, and backed up farther, readying her slingshot, but Aries put his free arm about her, and pulled her to him.

Medusa came through the tunnel, a cloud of dust billowing behind her.  Her back half covered in soft gray dust, and was wrapped around a rope.  “That’s all done.” She said, dropping the rope.

“You collapsed the tunnel?” Phoenix twisted to ask Aries.

He nodded.  “No one is following us.”

“Alright then,” Phoenix let out a long sigh, glad she had shed her tears on Splinter’s head, so that she had none left to shed now.  “Let’s go home.”

They began to walk, Phoenix did not recognize where they were.  She’d never taken the escape route to The Back Up Burrow when she’d left Splinter with two of her children.  They’d always come another way around to drop what little supplies they spared—the extra blankets that they’d made, the grocery bags for making new mats and other supplies, scraps of fabric, a little bit of food. 

None of them said anything, which made it possible for them to hear the hum of rotors.

They froze, their eyes all going wide as they looked at each other.

Around a corner came seven robot-riding brains.  At seeing the four of them standing, their grocery bags in hand as if they were strolling back from the market, they raised their guns and spread their legs into a firing pose.

“There are Kraang down here?!”  


	78. Chapter 78

Of course Kraang were down here.  What a stupid question.  They were everywhere, it was only a matter of time before they ran into them. 

Today sucks, Phoenix thought.

The four of them dropped their bags and scattered, just as lasers passed the air where they had just stood. 

Phoenix rolled, when she came up, she readied her sling.  She grunted as she felt the burn in her shoulder, as her gashes opened up again.  The feeling of wet, mixed with the crust on her chest made her miss when she let loose her first bullet.

Arcos raised his sledgehammer and swung it, snapping the head off of a Kraangdroid.  The Kraang inside of it chittered, and ran off, weaving through the legs of the others.  It tripped one up, who fell into a third.  Arcos wasted no time in dispatching of the two that were down before they could recover.

Aries swayed his ax from side to side, walking forward and batting away beams as he did.  When he got to one of the droids, he brought his ax from the bottom, and sliced it in two.  He then raised it to deflect a shot aimed at him, and rolled to the side.

Medusa darted to the side, and climbed the walls until she was on the ceiling.  In a flash, she made her way to the back of the group of Kraangdroids.   Her whips immediately unarmed the once closest to her, and a flick of her tail sent the headless robot crashing into the wall.  She felt a slight sting as a laser clipped her.  With a hiss she launched herself at the offending Kraangdroid, coiling up around and squeezing, sinking her fangs into its head, sending sparks flying.

Phoenix changed hands, in hopes that it would help with her shoulder.  She grunted in frustration more than pain when it didn’t.  She was able to hit one of the Kraangdroids, however, square in the torso, pink goo exploding inside of the chamber that held it.

Aries hovered his hand over his lower back, and Medusa licked the spot where she’d been nicked.

“Come here,” Phoenix said, her voice strained. Both kids came over to her.  She examined their wounds, Medusa’s was easy to take care of, she was able to cause it to scab over in only a few moments.  Aries, however, was a different matter.  “You didn’t tell me Splinter hurt you,” she admonished.

“You didn’t ask,” he huffed.

“I need to clean this out first,” she said.  “Come on, let’s get going.”

Arcos held up one of the grocery bags.  “I don’t think the pigeon eggs made it.”

Today really sucks, Phoenix thought.

Medusa flicked out her tongue.  “Awwwww.”

“We can get some more,” Aries said.  He began walking over the Kraang bodies.

The other three followed him, again falling into silence.

As they walked on, the reality of what was happening began to sink into Phoenix’s consciousness, just as the pain in her shoulder seemed to seep into her body.   Splinter was gone.  Forever.  He was now her enemy, even if she never saw him again.  They would see his turtles again, and they would have to fight them, because they were the bad guys. 

The bad guys, she scoffed in her mind.  Like a child’s cartoon, the good guys and the bad guys.

 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.

I didn’t keep him safe, she felt tears coming.  I didn’t think I had anymore tears.  She blinked rapidly, and they faded.

She hadn’t kept him safe.  The fighting he had done in the large room of The Burrow was that of an animal.  That of a rat.  On all fours, discarding any kind of civility.  When he stood on two legs, for brief moments, he was hunched and leaning forward, not like a man at all.  She had managed to look into his amber eyes when he’d snapped at her, and there was no recognition there.  He was snapping at something he didn’t know.   There was no humanity in him.  It was all an animal.  What had happened to him?

Is that what happened to mutants when they were too sick?  His fever had been so high.  His temperature had bolted up so quickly, she’d not been able to do anything about it.  She had not taken proper care of him beforehand, and then this had happened.  It was not a coincidence, she was sure of it.

She had been selfish.  She had been selfish in wanting to heal all of those mutants at the juncture, for wanting to feel wanted and important.  She had been selfish in wanting him by her side, instead of insisting that he rest, that he drink, that he eat, that he take a set of herbs to continue with his healing regimen she’d instituted.  She had been too absorbed in what she was doing to even think of him, to think of anything other than the patient in front of her.  He had saved her life from that earwig, in movements she couldn’t even perceive, like magic.  It had been…wonderful to have him there.

And now he was gone.

Her belly still hurt, at her solar plexus, where whatever it was that was ripped from her insides had resided.  It wasn’t a physical hurt, it resembled an emotional one that leaves a phantom feeling in the chest.  Only, it wasn’t emotional either.  It was, something else.  The feeling of _mine_ bounced about in the empty space that was left by whatever had been there to begin with, it tasted of Splinter, almost sounded of him in her inner ears, but there was no longer anything there to claim.  She wasn’t sure what had been there in the first place.

Why did you lead me to him, only to have him leave like this? She asked the unbidden thought.

 _Safe_ , it answered.

But I didn’t keep him safe.  I wasn’t able to keep anyone safe.  Aries is hurt, Medusa is hurt, I am hurt.  With the thought, her shoulder began to ache more.  My shirt is ruined.

 _Safe_.

You always give only one word answers, she thought petulantly.  Is it going to be years before I know what _safe_ means?

The unbidden thought did not answer her.

***

Arcos glanced back at his mother noticing that the blue of her shirt was almost completely gone on her shoulder and down the arm.  He was torn about them now going to the Back-Up Burrow.  It was a relief that they were now going to a permanent place, that the limbo of waiting was done.  It was a relief that things were set again, that an enemy was no longer their friend, that it was just the four of them again, without the worries of someone or something else.

But Splinter had been with them for so long, almost four months total, even if he wasn’t awake the entire time.  He had become a fixture in the Burrow, part of the background.  When he finally began to come into the foreground, it was not unpleasant at all.  It was sometimes eerie, with his watching and his silence, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

Then he’d attacked them, just like the rat that was part of him, that was so much of him, as the bear was a part of Arcos.  During battle it had not escaped him that inside of the rational, thinking part of Arcos, the part that was human, there was an animal, that at any time could escape.  He felt it the first time when he had come to his mother’s rescue, years ago, when she was being attacked by those thugs, when she was just trying to help someone.  The thrill of being taken over by something that didn’t have to think, that didn’t have to worry about what others would think, about consequences, about tomorrow.  To be the bear that he knew resided within him, and be only in the moment, protecting those he loved.

He had noticed that Splinter must have been holding the picture of his sons, he’d seen it on the floor during the fight.  Is that what happened to him?  The urge to regain, to protect, his loved ones was too great for the human in him, that he’d become the animal that was so apparent in his outer appearance?

He remembered his mother drilling into them, once they’d met the Grey Cats, and been introduced to the idea that they were the monsters that stole into people’s dreams at night, the animals that ruled the dark when there was no light available in it.

“You are not animals,” she had said.  Her hair was still red back then, with golden highlights running through it.  “You are people.  You are just a different kind of people.”

“What makes us people?” he asked.  “And not animals?”

“Animals cannot make a choice,” she told him.  “Animals go only on their instincts.”  She looked at all four of her children, one after the other, a soft look on her face.  “You can make any choice you want, and any time.  And you can change your choice whenever you want.  **That** is what makes you people.”

He often wondered, innumerable times since that conversation, how thin the line between animal and person actually was.

Despite those uneasy thoughts, a relief seeped through him, that it was over.  No more waiting, he thought to himself.

 

***

 

Medusa slithered side to side in an effort to not have her scabbed over burn hit the floor and sting.  From her position in the back of the group, she could see blood on Aires back where Splinter had gashed him.  Her mother’s shirt was covered in blood from the back, it slowly seeped into the back of the opposite arm from her hurt shoulder.

Medusa’s sense of uncertainty grew with each slither toward The Back-Up Burrow.  Was this new place going to hold the same dangers as The Burrow?  As The Haunted Warehouse?  At the warehouse they had to beware of humans, and then the Kraang had come and destroyed it.  In the Burrow there was always the threat of something finding them, whatever the something was, and of the delicate truce between Splinter and them being shattered.  In an instant it had been, with Splinter attacking them, and then running off like a mindless animal.

Was the Back-Up Burrow doing to be the same way?  Was it going to be a constant watch for Kraang, and strange creatures coming to destroy them in the underground of the city now taken over by aliens?  Was it going to be a steady stream of mutants injured by humans and aliens, of watching their backs in the dark?

She just wanted to go back home.  Back to her home.  But that wasn’t here anymore, just like the Burrow.

***

Aries’ back stung as the sweat, lanolin, and movement irritated his scratches.  His feet dragged slightly, and striding next to his mother, he noticed that her’s did as well.   Her face looked slightly pained.   Why wouldn’t it?  His probably looked pained too.

He was trying to not concentrate on the pain his back, so he went through a list of things that they had in the Back-Up Burrow.  He suddenly realized, “All of our medical supplies are at the juncture with those other mutants.”

Phoenix stopped, her face having a highly annoyed look on it. 

“Guess we aren’t going to our new home yet,” Medusa grumbled, turning to go back the way they came.  “Now we have to backtrack—“

“We aren’t backtracking,” Phoenix said, her voice laced with anger.  “How do we get to that juncture from here without backtracking?”

“This way,” Aries answered right away, turning at the next intersection of tunnels.  “We are too far out of the way.”

“How far away is it?” Phoenix asked.   “I have no sense of direction down here…”

“Only about 10 miles,” he assured her.  “Not much longer than it would have taken us from the Burrow.” 

Phoenix whined, getting a smile from Medusa flashed to her.  “At the rate we’re walking, that’s going to take us four hours…”

Medusa swept up to her and coiled around her.  “That’s what you get for being a human being,” she chided.  “You go slow.”  She turned to her brother, now at her side.  “Lead the way.”

With the boys on all fours, and Medusa darting at the rear even with Phoenix’s weight in her coils, their progress went much faster than it ever would have with Phoenix on her feet.   The speed of running quadrupedically helped with his back not hurting so much, as if the burn in his legs too Aries thoughts of off his scrapes.

His scrapes.   The lightness with which he’d hit Splinter when going at him surprised him so much it too him off guard.  So much so, he couldn’t stop before hitting the wall.  The rat had climbed on his back with such an ease it was freaky, but the gashes he had on his back now didn’t feel so easy.  They felt stingy.

What had happened to him?  He was the calmest person, human or mutant, that Aries had ever encountered, ever.  His calm came off of him with a steady stream, soaking everything and everyone around him in it.  It felt relieving to be in his presence when Aries could think about the calm.  Calm was so rare in his mind, in his body.  He felt calm when he whittled.

Then Splinter’d…who knew what he’d done.  Had he gone crazy?  His mother said his fever was high, had simply gone nuts?  He remember reading in history of people going mad with fever.  Perhaps that is what happened to him.  Did that really happen?  He always thought it was an embellishment of the author of the story to make it more interesting.  Perhaps King George really did crack because of his constant childhood illnesses.

He’d seen his mother thrown across the room, and the rage that overtook him sometimes, that made him want to hurt what was whatever in front of him, around him, below him, above him, had taken over.  He’d dropped his head and run toward the rat mutant with the full intention of crushing him against the wall until his insides popped out through his ears.

Now he was gone.  Aries had been able to walk next to his mother, hold her hand if he wanted, pick her up and carry her if he wanted, kiss her if he wanted, with no one to watch him or take her away with his own illnesses.  He could carry her now, if he wished, and not let Medusa do it.  Medusa was better for it at the moment, she could go faster than he could when carrying something.  But he could carry her if he wanted to.

Perhaps on their way home to the Back-Up Burrow, he would.


	79. Chapter 79

“We’re almost there,” Arcos said.  “I can smell the Inleters.”

“The who?” Medusa asked.

“The Inleters,” he explained.  “The people who come from the Inlet…”

“That’s bad, man,” Aries said, coming off of all fours to his feet.  “You come up with awful names.”

“Do you have a better name?” Arcos’ grizzly voice was not kind.

“No, he doesn’t,” Phoenix said as they entered the juncture and Medusa put her down.  “The Inleters it is.”

“The who is what?” asked Sparks, running up to them as they entered.  He stopped short when he got to them.  “What happened to you?”

“You,” Arcos answered, “you are the Inleters.”

“We met up with some Kraang,” Phoenix said at the same time.  “I need my medical supplies.”  Her voice was The Phoenix, all business, no reproach.  Then she took a deep breath.  “Please,” she said softly.

“Where is your…” Sparks’ voice faded, “…uh….”

“Patient?” Phoenix finished for him.  “He’s not here anymore.”

Russe came up to them, “I am glad you are here,” her accent was so thick, it was hard to understand her in her rush, “Many people need your help.”

“She is going to take care of herself first,” Aries stood beside her, and put a wooly arm about her shoulders.  His mother hissed and twisted away from him pain, and he bent in apology.  “Sorry, Mama.”

Her bag appeared, and she asked the mutant carrying it to fetch her some pine water.  “You first, Medusa.  You’re easy.”  She washed out the small burn, and put a wrap on it.

“Shirt off, Aries,” she commanded.

“You’re doing this in the wrong order,” he said, but complying with taking of his shirt.  “You’re supposed to do the most injured first.”

She chuckled, “Oh, so you **have** been listening?” she teased.

“Do I have a choice?” he winked at her.

She noticed from the corner of her that Russe moved slightly to get a better look at her rather well built son.  She wasn’t sure what the cat was going to be able see, as all of him was covered in wool.

All of him save the three gashes in his back.

As she cleaned him, she announced, “You don’t need stitches.  They’re not as deep as I thought.  I’m not going to sheer you at them, though,” she twisted around him so he could see her face.  “I think the wool growing back will itch too much.  Scratching it will make it worse.”

He smiled back at her and bent down, kissing her on the lips.  “You’re turn now.”

“I’m not taking off my shirt,” she flatly.

Medusa and Arcos almost fell over laughing, and Aries had trouble standing up straight from trying to stifle his.  “Good to know you aren’t too injured to joke, Mama.”

“Always,” she said obligingly, pouring a drinking bottle of pine water over her shoulder.  She gave out a whoot, and spun around, her face contorting in pain.  The floor dripped with the water, now pink mixed with blood.  “Oh, that hurrrrrtttsssss!”  She began blowing on her shoulder.

“Why did you do that for?” Aries asked, picking up her medical bag.

“So I could feel the burn, why do you think?” she snapped, taking a few deep breath.  She noticed that Sparks and Russe both backed up a step or two.  Phoenix sighed, and began to unbutton the top of her shirt.  Peeling the shoulder away with one hand, the other cupping the top of her breast above her corset and clicked her tongue. 

 “You need a new shirt,” Aires said.  “This one isn’t going to make it.”

“I take it you don’t have extra small shirts lying around, eh?” Arcos asked Sparks.

“Uh…” the raccoon shook his head.  “No?”

“Do you need stitches, Mama?” Aries asked.

She wanted to say no, that she was fine, but she knew she wasn’t.  The gashes that Splinter had left in her shoulder were deep, and they hurt, and if she didn’t stitch them, they’d take much longer to heal.  The scarring might even effect the elasticity of her skin, which would greatly hinder her firing her sling.  “I think so, Lamb’s Ear.”

“I can thread the needle for you,” he said, digging in the bag.

“I’ll find you another top,” Arcos said.

Phoenix nodded.    “Go with him Medusa,” she said.  “No going wandering alone.  Just go back to the Back-Up Burrow when you’re done.  There isn’t any reason for you to come back here.”

They both nodded and headed off.

Aries handed her the needle with a string of horse hair in it, and held a tiny pair of nail scissors in his palm. 

Still holding her shirt up, to keep whatever modesty she had with a wet, torn cotton shirt, she tried to pierce her skin, and then winced.  She wasn’t going to be able to sew it and hold her shirt up at the same time.  She might not even be able to sew it letting go of her shirt and flashing the room, with it being her shoulder.  The muscles were going to move as she sewed.  “I think you’re going to have to do it, Lamb’s Ear.”

“You want me to sew it up?”  He took a step back.

“It’s just like sewing clothes,” she said, looking down at her corset.   She held the needle out to him.

He looked at it anxiously, and then took it.  “OK,” he said timidly.  “Where do I start?”

She instructed him verbally in what to do, tilting her head to watch as he worked.  She had to use a great deal of will not to jump when he sewed, it hurt.  A lot.  I will be much more compassionate to my patients, she promised herself.  Being still is hard.  “You’re better at this than I am,” she told him. 

“This is not like sewing clothes,” he muttered.  “The edges are all jagged.  It is hard to see where to sew, there is blood everywhere.”

“Wipe the blood away,” she told him.  “And just try your best.  You’re doing very well.”

“If this was cloth, I’d straighten the edges.”

“If the jags were very bad,” Phoenix told him, “and there was skin to spare, you’d that here too.”  He looked up at her and she quickly continued.  “But they aren’t bad, and there isn’t any skin to spare.”

He finished, and then poured more pine water over it.  She hissed and wiggled, but did not do the dance she’d performed before.  “These are going to leave nasty scars, aren’t they?” he asked.

She considered her shoulder.  “Maybe,” she admitted.

Aries stood up, and looked at Sparks.  “My mother needs something to eat and drink.   She hasn’t had breakfast.”

Or lunch, she said to herself, or dinner.  Her stomach rumbled.

“We don’t have much,” the raccoon said, grabbing a can on the wall near him and handing it to her.

She read the label.  “Beef stew,” she laughed.  “That will do just nicely, thank you.”

Sparks stared at her.

“Please say you have a can opener…” her shoulders slumped and sent a jab of pain through her neck.

“…Uh….”

“Sparks!”

Aries took the can from Phoneix and used the tip of his horn as a can opener, tearing a sharp, jagged edge around the side of the can to take the lid off.  “We seriously have to talk about your preparation skills, man.” 

 

***

The four of them were in various positions, scraping the walls and floor of the Back-Up Burrow.  Phoenix had tended to the sick and injured, after eating three cans of beef stew.   All but one of the triage patients had died during her absence, and several others whom she had thought would make it.

“Where did you put the bodies?” she asked.

“We gave them to the sea,” Russe said.

Phoenix smiled at that.  “A fitting funeral for an Inleter.”

Russe smiled sadly back.

The lizard man whom she’d been captured with was still alive, though still talking in a weak voice.  She meant to go and talk to him as soon as he got his strength up.  And she got her courage up.

Aries had carried his mother back to the Back-Up Burrow, sometimes on his shoulders like a little child, and sometimes in his arms like a lover.  She laughed, and urged him to put her down, but he refused, relishing the feel of her little body against him, and the smell of herbs and soap, albeit mixed with pine, wafting by his nose.  He had given Sparks a list of items to get for his people’s new home, and mentioned to Russe on the side that he needed to also get a backbone.  “Don’t worry,” she told him.  “He’s got more in there than it looks.”

Arcos and Medusa had found a several tops they thought would fit their mother.  She chose a white blouse with wide sleeves that buttoned at the wrist.  “We can bleach it when it gets dirty,” Medusa suggested.  “That way it won’t ever get dingy!”

They then began preparing their new home for living in.

Therefore, it surprised all three of the Children of the Phoenix when their mother threw her scraper down, and stood up.  “Je suis fatigue de la merde raclage!” (I’m tired of scraping shit!) she cried.  The scraping reminded her of Splinter, how she’d scraped the burrow to make it clean for him, even though he was unconscious.  Her belly seemed to tear in the place where the invisible something had been ripped out more and more with each scrape she made in the Back-Up Burrow’s floor.  Her arm was aching, as she could only use one to scrape with.  If Kraang were down here, what was the difference between this place and anywhere up above?  “I am tired of the smell of pine.”

“How are we going to clean this place without the pine water?” Medusa asked.  “We don’t have anything else.  What will disinfect it?”

“Fresh air disinfects,” Phoenix said, her mouth twisted angrily.

“We can’t get fresh air down here,” Arcos told her, his voice petulant.  “That’s why people make comments about things stinking like a sewer.”

 She turned on her son, her eyes slitting.  “I am tired being down here!” she said slowly.

“Then let’s find a place up top,” Aries said quickly, “we can find something safe up there.  Other people have.”

“The Kraang are all around up there,” Arcos said. 

“They’re down here too,” Medusa answered.  “Or did you forget?”

Arcos gave her a nasty look. 

Phoenix walked toward the crank lamp and picked it up.  “We’re finding another place to live.”

“Thank you!” Aries looked up and raised his hands to the heavens.

“We already put all this effort into this place!”  Arcos said.

“I put effort into this place,” Aries corrected.  “You just brought stuff here.”

Phoenix began to walk down a tunnel where she knew a manhole cover was close by.  “We’re going home,” she stated.

“To the Burrow?” Medusa asked, confused.

“No,” her mother replied.  “To the Haunted Warehouse.”

“The Haunted Warehouse was destroyed,” Arcos said. 

“The warehouse next to it, wasn’t.”  Phoenix’s voice was deadly.

She stopped at the ladder that lead to a manhole cover.  “Up we go, kids,” she said determinedly.  “I’m tired of nothing but candle light and crank lamps.”

“Me too!” Aries leapt up to the top of the ladder easily, and lifted the manhole cover, throwing it off into the street.

“Careful, wool-for-brains!” Arcos jumped up after his brother, bringing his sledgehammer to bare as he did so.  “There could be something up here.”

“Nothing is here,” Aries snapped.

His mother and sister emerged from the manhole, and Phoenix closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  Air.  It wasn’t fresh, it had the smell of Kraang all in it, but it was better than down there.  There was no reminder of Splinter up here, there was no waste to scrape off of walls and no reminder of a heartache she had no wish to think upon.   She turned, heading to the alley in between two buildings, knowing where she was in the city.  “Come on,” she said.

“Why don’t we just jump the rooftops?” Aries asked.  “It would be a lot quicker to go as the crow flies.”

“Someone will see us,” Arcos said.  “Just because it is cloudy, doesn’t mean it is night time.”

“We’ll walk on the ground until it gets dark,” Phoenix said.  “Then we’ll take the rooftops.”

Phoenix felt better with every step she took, despite the eerie silence, the lack of people.  The only things that marred it were the sense that people were around, despite there being no evidence of any, and the occasional scurry of a rat.  The sound was so distinct to her now, after her last run in with the Rat King, that she could tell the difference between it and another animal.  The sound made her belly clench, and made tears come to her eyes.  The wet didn’t stay long, and didn’t spill over.  A deep breath of real air made them recede until she heard the sound again.

As they wove their way through the streets, the kids were surprised to find their mother stop at the back door to an apartment building. She tried to open it.  It was locked.  “Medusa,” she commanded.  “Break the door down.”

“What are we doing?” she asked, whipping her tail around and bashing the door inward with a crash.

They were all silent for a moment, waiting for the crashing sound to empty from the air, and listening for anything else that might follow it.  Nothing did.  “We’re getting something to eat.”

“From someone’s apartment?” Arcos asked.  “I thought we weren’t supposed to do that.”

“We aren’t,” she said.  “We’re doing it anyway.”

The building was a set of two bedroom apartments, all with little cabinet space in their kitchens.  However, there were enough canned goods and processed food amid the rotting stuff that they were all able to fill their bellies. 

“I’m not complaining,” Aries prefaced his complaint, “but I can’t wait until we can eat fresh vegetables again.”

“Me, too,” his mother agreed.

“I’m fine without them,” Medusa said.  “There are still plenty of rats in the city to eat.”  She gave her mother a sidelong smile.

“Don’t go there, Medusa,” her mother’s voice was lethal.  “Ever again.”

There was an uneasy silence, punctuated by the sound of chewing, when Arcos said, “I would like some chocolate.”

“Ooo,” Medusa chimed in.  “Brownies!”

“I saw a brownie box in the cabinet!”   Aries jumped up and opened one of them, revealing a box of plain, chocolate brownies. 

“Once we get set back up,” Phoneix stood up, dusting her hands and her thighs from crumbs, “we will make brownies to celebrate.”

With the coming of dark, they quietly climbed to the rooftops, and set about jumping in as straight a line as they could back to the warehouse.  The wind in her hair felt good, it was soothing, like cool water cleaning her off from the months underground in the stagnant, foul smelling air. 

She was going to leave all of that had happened in the past months behind her, she decided.  The fresh air was going to blow it off of her.  It was a beautiful and painful reprieve, and she had known that from the very beginning.  She had not known how the rat mutant that the unbidden thought had lead her to was going to act when he woke up.  That he had acted so pleasing to her was a bonus for helping a living thing heal.  It was not part of the deal.  The unbidden thought had never told her that she was going to have that, it only lead her to him.  You should be grateful, she told herself, that you were able to have a little bit of that comradery.  She had never thought she’d experience it again in her life, and Universe had been kind enough to let her.  Be grateful.

She tried very hard to be.

When they got back to the warehouse, it had completely collapsed.  It was now a pile of rubble, details undiscernible in the dark.  The warehouse next to it, however, on the other side of the garden was untouched.

She should have felt relief at coming home.  She should have felt the comfort of being in a place that held so much for her.  But the place in her belly that hurt began to slowly seep up to her chest.

She felt empty.


	80. Chapter 80

Making a decision and keeping it are two totally different things.  Phoenix knew this.  She had known it since she was very young, just as most people do.  Keeping a decision involving emotion often means convincing one’s subconscious to cooperate, and that is not an easy thing to do.  Phoenix knew this also, but it did not help her to feel any better.

She slept with the kids, all of them snuggled together as they use to be when they cuddled for warmth in the winter.  With Medusa as their mattress, Phoenix lay in the middle.  Each of her boys laid on either side of her, one with his head on her chest, his nose facing upward into her neck, and the other on her lap.  Their bodies laid against hers on either side, keeping her good and warm.  Medusa put her head on top of her mother’s, her tongue flicking out occasionally and hit her nose waking her up.

It was not Medusa that woke her up at the moment, however, but her dreams.  She dreamt of Splinter, he was saying something to her, but she couldn’t understand what it was.  His voice was the muted melody she heard for so many years while she waited for him, a series of separated, distinct notes in an accent she had not previously been able to place.  His face was its normal serious one, so she could not discern what he was saying by his expression.  His ears were motionless, he was only moving his mouth with unintelligible mumbles coming out.

She woke up gently, not in a start like a nightmare.  There was no need for a start, it wasn’t an unpleasant dream.  What was unpleasant was the emptiness in her belly, only it wasn’t her belly.  It was in the place of her gut, but not really there, somewhere else, that resided in the same place at the same time.  It was made all the more unpleasant by the fire that burned in between her legs.

It had been years, and years, and years since this had happened to her.  The children were so small back then, and she had been so much younger.  She knew what caused it, and it surprised her.  She tried not to move, moving made it worse, and she wanted it to go away.  There was absolutely nothing she could do about it.  There was no privacy whatsoever in their new home, and if she went to another floor to be alone, one of the children would surely follow her.   

The thought of her dream, with Splinter and his musical voice, even if she couldn’t understand what he was saying, made her heart soft, and the need in her worse.  Why was this happening to her now, when she couldn’t do anything about it?  Why hadn’t she reacted like this back in the sewer when he was there?  At least then, she might have been able to do something about.  She might have been able to do a **real** something about it.  She’d had a short window, what was it, three days, when she’d been alone with him.  One night of them was spend up against him, breathing in his smell of musk and grapes.  She’d awoken in his arms, mortified at her actions the night before, and they weren’t meant as anything inappropriate, even if they had been. 

Now, however, in the dark of night, in the new warehouse, with the windows open, and the air of the dead city blowing in, her thoughts went to a completely different action she could have taken that morning, when she’d awoken against him.  One she didn’t even think of taking then, but which she would have seriously considered had she felt the way she did now. 

The mind is greatest aphrodisiac, the ancient Greeks said.  She would not have thought it true, but now that she had all the time in the world to think about Splinter, it appeared the ancient Greeks knew what they were talking about.

Stop thinking about it, you’re making it worse, she told herself.

Splinter’s absence in her life didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would.  The hurt she did have was precious to her, and despite having made the decision to forget her bittersweet respite, she was not disappointed when she dreamt of him.  His absence wasn’t painful, but it made the empty place in her stomach, where whatever it was was ripped out, seem even more empty. 

His break, that was what she had decided to call it.  The word was clean, and could mean many different things, so that she could fool herself into whatever meaning she wished it to be.  The days since Splinter’s break had been filled with the rebuilding of their warehouse home.  It was set up in the same way as the Haunted Warehouse next door, only in mirror image.  They had been able to salvage some things from the debris next door.  The kids had found much of their meagre personal belongings, and they now all resided in their new warehouse.  Phoenix had found her wedding and engagement ring amid the shattered pieces of the bowl in which they had lain for years.  She salvaged many of the books, especially her biological, herbal, and medical ones.  She also found the white vase with the chip in it.  Now it had two chips, one of the lip, and one on the base.  It held a place of honor in their new home just has it did their old now, with a sprig of juniper it.   The kitchen, or what would eventually be the kitchen, was situated near the garden window, with a knotted rope leading down to it.

The garden itself was just starting to come back to life, new growth making its way through the ground to welcome the cloudy spring.  More of it was coming in sooner than it had in any other year, the Haunted Warehouse now being a pile of rubble, let the sun shine down on it in a way that it never had before.  She would sit in the center of it, her legs crossed and her hands on her thighs, and tilt her head up to feel the sun on her face.  Often, when she closed her eyes, Splinter’s face would emerge, clear and distinct, and she would sigh and open them, and look at the garden around her.  This was her favorite place in the whole world, where her past, and her present, and what she thought would be her future converged.  But when she tried to soak in the sun, and the picture of him flashed in her mind like a photograph, her soft heart and her empty solar plexus made it seem like she wasn’t there.  It was remote, as if she were somewhere else, seeing it through a window.  At those times, she tried to think of the hope it represented…fresh growing things in a world devoid of people, filled with Kraang and the military and killing, where she could sit with her legs crossed and her hands on her thighs with her face to the sun.

 

***

 

At the start of the evening, they would get restless and fidgety, especially after Phoenix had read them whatever book it was they were reading at the time.  They all danced around the feeling, until one evening Aries said, “Is this what we are going to do for the rest of our lives?”

Phoenix stood up, and twisted her mouth.  “No,” she said.  “It isn’t.”

“What are we going to do with the rest of our lives, then?” Arcos’ grizzly voice was dubiously.

“I am not sure,” Phoenix went to the wall and reached for her knife and slingshot.  “But for right now, we are going to try and help take our city back from the Kraang.”

Aries jumped up, and pumped his hand the air.  “Now we’re talking!”  After all of them retrieved their weapons and lowered themselves down the garden window, Aries asked, “So what do we do first?”

“First, we—“ Arcos began.

Phoenix held up her hand, “First we go and check out this Earth Protection Force.”

“The Inleters say they fire on anything that isn’t human,” Arcos argued.

“I didn’t say we go and knock on the door and introduce ourselves,” she said.  “I said, we go and check them out.”

Arcos didn’t look very happy, as his mother climbed the garden fence and jumped to the other side.  Following, they all jumped to the rooftops.

“I think we should go and try to find the Grey Cats,” Arcos said.  “Some of them have to be still be alive.”

“They could be anywhere in the city, Arcos,” his mother answered.  “We know where the EPF bases are.  We can at least gather some information to be able to do something.”  I desperately need to **do** something, she thought.  She needed something to keep her mind busy, something to make her dream of something else, than _him_.

The word echoed in her head, in her own voice and the voice that wasn’t hers, the voice from which the poetry came.

“How are we going to—?” Arcos began.

“Chut, Arcos,” (Shush, Arcos) Phoenix cut him off again.  He quieted and as they leapt from rooftop to rooftop, she listened to the place where the poetry came, where the unbidden thought spoke to her when it was quiet.  Him, she said in her head.

 The place where the poetry came from was silent.

Why was she trying to get the unbidden thought to say him?  She was supposed to be forgetting him!  She was supposed to pretend that it didn’t happen, that it was a pleasant dream that she’d dreamt and was now over.  She’d woken up from it.  Why was she trying to grasp onto a phantom?

 _Him_ , said the unbidden thought.

Despite her thoughts of pushing things away into the past, she was comforted by the word, and that it was not she who had said it.

They could see the EPF fortification from quite a distance, they were the only lights in the entire city. They slowed down considerably and began hiding behind water tanks and air conditioning units.  When they reached as close to the edge of the fortification as they could without being super-stealthy, they stopped and assessed their situation.

“This place is huge!” Aries whispered harshly. 

“There are only four guards facing the city,” Medusa noted.

“Maybe the Kraang aren’t trying to attack the fortification,” Arcos suggested.  “Maybe they’re concentrating on picking them off as they come into the city.”

“They’re military personnel,” Arcos said.  “They might fall for being picked off once, but they’d come up with a different strategy after that.”  He shook his head.  “At least, I would hope so.”

“Maybe there aren’t very many of them left,” Phoenix added.

“So we’re here, Mama,” Arcos looked at her, “What do we do now?”

“That’s an excellent question, Teddy Bear,” she replied.   She was quiet for a moment as she thought.  “I will go down there and have a better look.”

“Why you?” Arcos asked.  “You’re the least likely one of us to be able to defend yourself if you get caught.”

She glared at her son, and said, “Because I’m human,” she said.  “And they shoot at everything that isn’t.”  The barb hit home, and she winced at the hurt look on Arcos’ face.  “Besides,” she amended, “I plan on getting caught.”

She made her way down to the street level and, out in the open, approached the guards.  “Oh!” she cried melodramatically, “Thank goodness I have finally made it to you!”

The four guards, spread out quite a ways from each other, all turned in her direction.

“I thought I would never make it, with all the aliens in the city!” Phoenix cried.

“Citizen, halt!” cried the soldier nearest to her, pointing is gun at her. 

She froze and put her hands up in the air.  Then her eyes went wide when she heard the powering up of guns.  Not the click of military guns, but the hum of lasers.


	81. Chapter 81

As if in slow motion, she saw the guard closest to her pull the trigger on his gun, a gun that looked suspiciously like a Kraang firearm.  She dropped and tumbled to the side on her good shoulder, and a hole appeared in the asphalt where she was just standing.

“Hold your fire!” she cried, “I’m on your side!”

The soldiers did not seem to agree with her, because the four of them began firing in her direction.  She managed to find cover behind the wheels of a large semi.  Poking her head around the tire, under the vehicle, she could see all four of their legs as they advanced on her.   What was going on?  Why were they firing at her?  Why were all four firing at her?  Surely they wouldn’t think that it would take four soldiers to overtake her?

She whipped out her slingshot out of habit, and drew it back with the intention of firing at the legs that she saw.  She let out a scream when she drew back the sling.  Pain shot through her shoulder, up her neck and down to the tip of her breast.  She heard her skin tear as a few of the stitches in her shoulder snapped.

She ducked behind the wheel again, pressing her back against it trying to get her pain under control.   Once she thought she could, she used her injured arm to hold the shaft of the sling, and her other one to pull the band.  It still hurt, but not enough that she couldn’t do it.   She missed the first leg she aimed at, but got the second.  She ducked back behind the tire just as a beam came whipping past.

She heard a strangled cry from one of the guards, and smiled.  Medusa must have coiled herself around one of them.  She popped up from behind the fender of the truck, and began pelting the guard whose leg she’d gotten.  He was firing at the back of the group, where all three of her children had shown up.  She shot him in the neck, and blood began to splatter in rhythmic intervals as he fell to the ground.

The guard closest to her had turned to fire on Arcos, Aries, and Medusa, but then twisted around to fire at Phoenix again.  She dipped back down behind the fender, and several lasers flew by overhead.  She bobbed back up, to see Arcos swing his hammer make contact with the man square in the back.  He flew forward, landing on his face and not getting up.

A shot flew by her ear, and looking to where it came from, she saw two Kraangdroids walking toward them.  A shot zipped by Aries, who had used his axe to reflect the lasers back at the guard whom he had engaged.  “A little help here, Mama!”

Phoenix leapt up onto the hood of the truck, and began firing at the torsos of the two Kraang.  She was forced to strafe off to avoid fire, but as she, she let off a shot.  It got one of them flat in between the eyes.  It made an odd chittering cry before the robot fell backwards onto its back.  Aries, now clear of fire, lowered his head and ran at the remained Kraang.

The all were still, waiting for any sign of reinforcements.  When they were sure there wasn’t any, Phoenix approached the guard closest to her, and the other three joined her.  She bend down, and examined a small flashing sickening-pink light on the back of the man’s neck.

“They’re with the Kraang?”  Medusa asked, motioning behind them.

“Good observation, snake-breath,” Arcos said sarcastically.

“I don’t think so,” Phoenix said.  “At least not entirely.”  She placed a finger on the light.  It didn’t give off any heat, even on the metal setting it was laid in.  “Look at this.”

The all bend down to take a look.

“What is it?” Aries asked.

“Lamb Ear, if I knew that, I would have said,” Phoenix told him.  She pinched it, and pulled at it.  It made a squishy sound, and her mouth twisted to a look of revulsion.   It was attached to a long pin, and she had to pull quite a bit before it came out.

“That’s gross,” Aries said.

She held it up to the light, “This is long enough that it must have been lodged in his brainstem,” she said.  She very gently rubbed her forefinger over the small pinprick that the device left. 

“Why would a device be put into his brainstem?” Medusa asked.

“It’s Kraang technology,” Arcos said.

Phoenix nodded.  “The brainstem is the most ancient part of a primate brain,” she said.  “It controls all of the automatic functions of the body.  It also controls the signals from the brain to the body.”

“You mean, it’s a mind control device?” Medusa asked.

“It might be,” she replied.

They heard footsteps approaching, and all of them took to the roofs again, behind an access door.  “The EDF is being controlled by the Kraang.”  Aries said, once they were settled.

“That would explain why there hasn’t seemed to be more of an attempt to take back the city,” Phoenix said.  “I guess the shells we found were before they were taken over.”

“Guess it’s a good thing that the military base used years and years worth of bullets and are slow to empty their dumpsters,” Arcos said.

“Yeah,”  Phoenix headed toward the edge of the roof.  “Looks like we go the information we needed.”

“We’re on our own, for now,” Aries said.

“We need to find the Gray Cats,” Arcos said.  “And we need to cultivate a better relationship with the Inleters. “

Phoenix turned to him, perched at the ledge.  “We aren’t cultivating a relationship with them now?”

“A relationship more than you being their doctor, and us being their consultants.”

“Isn’t that the relationship we had with the Gray Cats?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

Arcos looked at her, blinking.  “No,” he drawled.

“Then what kind of relationship did we have with them?”

He shook his head.  “They are our friends,” he said unbelieving she would even ask the question.

“They weren’t our friends,” Medusa broke in.  “They were our allies.  Don’t you remember the Battle at the Pretty Building?  Every single one of them would have rather chosen to follow Chategris to a fight with no plan, and not because they think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

“Many of them think the three of you are the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Phoenix added.

“And all of them think that Mama is some sort of magic worker,” Medusa went on.  “And not a one of them was our side.  Not a one of them chose us.  That’s not our friends.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Arcos growled, “Miss I’ve Lost My Best Friend.”

Medusa hissed at him.

“Stop it, both of you,” Phoenix commanded.  They both turned their eyes to her.   “Medusa is right.  They aren’t our friends, they’re our allies.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t a part of our lives, or that we don’t want them to be.  They’re more like…extended family.”  What an awfully dysfunctional extended family we have, she thought.  “Not a very good extended family, either.”  At Arcos’ angry look, she continued, “It doesn’t make it bad that they aren’t our friend, Teddy Bear.  We simply need to be aware of what they are when we make big decisions.  They won’t make the decisions of friends, so we have to be mindful of that.  But they’re all we had and that is a good thing, whether they were friends or not.”

“Then why don’t you want to look for them?”

“Where are we to even start?  The city is empty, everyone is in hiding.  It would be like finding a needle in a haystack.”  He opened his mouth again to speak, and Phoenix held her arm up.  She winced as pain went through her shoulder.  “Why don’t we start with what we have?”

“What do you mean?”

“We will start with cultivating our relationship with the Inleters,” she said.

“That’s not the same as the Gray Cats.”

“I didn’t say it was,” she told him.  “I just said that we can start with what we have, and this what we have.  In fact,” she made her way to the access door and pulled it open.  “Why don’t we go there now?”

Upon reaching the street from the building, Aries made his way to the sewer grate. 

“Why don’t we walk until we’re closer,” Phoenix suggested.   “Fresh air,” she waved her hand about them.

When they finally got to the juncture of the Inleters, the place was in a great deal more order than it had been their last visit, when they’d left The Burrow.  “I see you got some stuff done,” Aries smiled and patted Sparks on the shoulder. 

The raccoon steadied himself from the playful blow.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Your suggestions have helped a lot.”

Russe walked over, a smile on her face, “Zdrvstvujte!”

All four of them smiled back, but said nothing.

“It means hello,” she said in her thick accent.

“Oh!” all four of them immediately became animate.  “Hello!”

“Were you able to detect our defenses when you came in?” Sparks asked.

“No,” Phoneix said.

“Good job,” Arcos slapped him on the shoulder.

He winced.  “They’re just guards,” he admitted, “but if you didn’t detect them, then that’s good.  They saw you and told us you were coming.”

Phoenix nodded, “That is good.  You’re become in the leader, eh?”

Sparks smiled proudly.  “I didn’t really have much of a choice,” he said.

Phoenix looked around the room, and then to Sparks, “I’ll look over the injured,” she said.   She turned to her children, “They’re just here to play.”

As she walked to the center of the room, she heard Russe say to Aries, “You play chess?”

“The EDF is being controlled by the Kraang,” Phoenix told Sparks as they set up a table. 

“What?”

“We found what we think are mind control devices on some guards,” she said.  “They aren’t just firing on mutants.  They had no compunction to fire at me without asking any questions.”

Sparks’ shoulders slumped.  “That means we have no hope…the city is going to remain occupied by the aliens.”

“There is always hope,” she leaned on the table.  “There’s all of us, right?”

He smiled half-heartedly.  “A pile of rag-tag mutants with no weapons and no place to live?”

“You can make a weapon,” she said.  “We did,” she gestured to her kids.  “You have a place to live.  You can make this place very comfortable.  You can move to a bigger place, and then everyone could have some private space.”  At Sparks dubious look she said, “You should probably consider moving anyway…”

He shook his head.  “No, we’ll stay here until they find us and make us move.  We’ve had to move too much.”

She wanted to say, “I don’t think that is a good idea,” but she was pleased that he was taking on the role of being in charge of these people.   So she nodded instead.

The chipmunk who had helped her during the emergency came up to the table, “Do you need anything, Phoenix?” he asked in a Spanish accent.

“Just the medical supplies all of you have managed to gather.  And maybe some paper and a pencil, so that I can write down what I think you should gather.”

He shook his head.  “No, I mean, do **you** need anything?”

She laughed.  “If you had it, I was say a hot tea with cream and two sugars.  But since I am quite sure you don’t, a glass of water would be delightful, thank you.”

The chipmunk scurried off, and several people began to mill about the table to get their hurts tended to.  “Let me get to the badly injured first,” she told them, “then I’ll see all of you, OK?”  She got a few grumbles, but they dispersed.

“Speaking of seeing people,” Sparks said quietly, “many of these folks have said they’ve seen your…uh…”

“My what?” she asked, knowing full well to what he was referring.

“…your…uh…” he waved his hands in the air, looking for a life preserver.  “Your man…?”

“He isn’t my ‘man’,” her voice was chilly.  “I don’t have a ‘man’, I have more class than to have a ‘man’.”  What was it with mutants and having men and women? Didn’t anyone get married anymore?  What happened to commitment?

“The rat that was with you when you first came here,” he said quickly.  “Many of these folks have said they’ve seen him running around…” he looked scared to say the rest, “…like a rat.”

Phoenix lowered her head, and closed her eyes.  A clear image of Splinter’s face came to her inner eye, and she felt two hot tears run down her cheeks.  He was still alive.  He was still in the sewer, which meant that he was unlikely to go to the surface if he hadn’t by now.  She could find him!  She opened her eyes, and wiped her face.  “When I am done here, those people will show me where they saw him,” she said.

He looked at her uncertainly.

“Has anyone tried to hurt him?” she said slowly.

“He attacked—“

She pointed her finger in his face, her own becoming a mask of wrath.  “If any one of your people lay a hand on him, I will kill them, and then I kill you for you not keeping them line.”  He stared at her in disbelief.  “Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“If you don’t believe me, then try me.”

“I believe you,” he said cautiously, as if he were talking to an angry dog growling at him.

“Good.”  The wrathful look left her face, and was replaced by a professional one.  “Get me the people who are the least recovered, and we can put them on the table.”  After a brief moment, she added.  “Please.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	82. Chapter 82

The chipmunk came back over to the table before Sparks had brought over her first patient.  In his hands was a tray, and instead of medical implements, it held a mug of hot, black tea, with cream.  She suspected it had two sugars.

“You’re joking?” she said with a smile.

The chipmunk looked alarmed.  “Didn’t you want—“

She waved her hands and smiled.  “I did, I did!” she assured him.  “I meant, I don’t believe you had it!”  She took a sip.  It was sweet, even for her, and the bitter aftertaste told her that he had put in two packets of artificial sweetener, equal to four sugars.  “It’s good,” she told him.  “But next time don’t waste so many packets of sweetener on me.  Just one is ok.  Even a half of one if you’re running short.”

He nodded, “I will go get the instruments we have,” he said. 

“Wait,” she called as he started to go.  “What’s your name?”

“Ardillo,” he said.

She held out her hand, “It is a pleasure to finally get to meet you properly, Ardillo.”

He took her hand, shook it and scurried away.

She took a deep drink of the tea, and then put it down.  It reminded her of Splinter, with his tea.  Green tea.  Like all green tea, it had hardly any taste, and with no sweetener it was bitter.  He would breathe in his tea before he took his first sip.  She had never gathered the courage to ask him why.  It seemed like a stupid question to her, one she should know the answer to.  She wished now she’d asked.  Now he was running the sewers with some sort of madness that she’d brought on, she was sure, by being so thoughtless with his care.

She shook her head, she had to stop thinking about him.  She had a job to do here, now.  But it was doing this very thing she was doing now that had made her so negligent of him in the first place.

Stop it! She told herself.  He’s gone, he’s gone because of you, and you can try to find him when you’re done.  She helped the mutant who was coming to her up on the table to lie down so she could examine him.

Softening her vision, seeing where the mutants that were brought to her were hurt, she asked them the doctorly questions she normally did.

“Where do you hurt?”

“Have you been drinking?  What have you been drinking?  How much have you been drinking?”

“Have you been cleaning your wounds?”

“If you need help you have to ask.”

Very few were being cared for to her satisfaction.  Most of them were taking as good of care of themselves as they could or that those around them knew how.  She had to fight disgust in the lack of knowledge that was being shown.

“Who wants to be a nurse?!” she cried out loudly, bringing the entire juncture to a stop. 

“Oh, oh,” Ardillo said, as if trying to smooth something over, “I will be your nurse, Phoenix.  You do not have to get upset.”

She smiled at the little mutant.  “You can’t be the nurse, Ardillo,” she said.  “You’re going to be the doctor.”

He looked at her as if she was crazy.

“And I am not upset.  I promise.”  She waited a few more moments and then cried, “No one?”  No one answered.  “Sparks!” she cried.  The raccoon came back to her side.  “I want two nurses.  No one is volunteering.”

The raccoon looked at her and blinked.  “You want me to assign people to be nurses?”

She saw where his weakness as a leader would be.  He could handle the large tasks, the tasks that addressed the entire group.   Everyone had to help clean, gather food, guard their home.  But to address individuals in a way they may not wish to be addressed was going to be a problem for them.  “This is something you’re going to have to learn how to do,” she said quietly.

“You! And you!”  Sparks pointed to two of the mutants who had helped with the triage patients.  “You’re our nurses.”

Despite his initial hesitation, the two of them came over, both with uninterested looks on their faces.  “Buck up,” she told them, “You’ve just started a new career.”

They both bugged their eyes out.

“What?” asked one.

“You’re going to list to Ardillo,” she told them.  Then looking down at the chipmunk she said, “You are going to listen to me.”

He nodded.  The other two just looked at him incredulously.

She began to instruct the three of them, sometimes individually, sometimes together.  She had one of them get a notebook and begin writing things down, and when a command to the nurses needed to be made, she had Ardillo do it.

He was so timid, he had a very difficult time even getting his voice loud enough to be heard.  “I cannot be a doctor,” he finally told her.  “You are the doctor.”

“Alright then,” she said.  “I am the doctor, and you are my nurse, correct?”

He just looked at her.

“When I was stitching up all those people, you were there the whole time.  You got me whatever I needed, and then when you figured out how the pattern went, you knew what to get me and it was there.”  She bent down so she could see him eye to eye.  “You have what it takes to be a doctor.  There are not many people that could do what you did.”

“It was what needed to be done…” he said.

She smiled, now confident in her decision.  “That is why you will make a good doctor.”  He broke eye contact with her.  “Tell you what,” she lifted his chin to look at her again, “you can be my nurse.  That makes you the head nurse when I am not here, alright?”

He nodded.

“OK, then.”

When the lizard mutant who had helped her escape came the table, she had to hold herself in to send everyone away and plow him with questions.   He was still weak, and mending slower than she would like.  Instead, she was able to care for him and send him on and see the next patient.

So her instructions continued, “Mammals injured need to have at least four cups of rusty water a day to build their iron in the blood,” she said.

“Where do we get rusty water?” one of them asked.

“You boil rusty metal,” she said simply.  “You will have problem finding it here.  I suggest you wash the items off first, and disinfect them.”

“Insects and arthopods need to drink at least four cups of salt water a day, to replenish their copper in the hemolymph.”

“What’s hemolymph?” asked the same one.

For a moment, she thought he was going to ask where they were going to get sea water.  “It’s insect blood.”

She continued until everyone was seen, and then dismissed them.  Ardillo stayed with her, and said, “Do you need anything?”

“You aren’t my personal servant, you know,” she told him with a grin. 

“But you…you are the Phoenix,” he said.

“And?”

“You are the Phoenix,” he repeated, as if it were self-explanatory.

She chuckled.  “There is something you can do,” she said.  “You can organize the information I’ve given you guys, so you can find it again when you need it.”

“A libro de consulta,” he said.

“If the Spanish is anywhere close to French, then yes.”

The chipmunk smiled and scurried off.

If these people don’t get some sort of backbone and organization, they’re going to get picked off until there aren’t any of them left, she started at the thought.  Is this what Chategris and The Gray Cats had thought about her and her little family all those years ago, when they had first met?  That they, in their littleness and happiness would go about and be picked off by dark underbelly of society one by one until none of them were left?  Had they thought Ailurosa was the beginning of that?  She squared her shoulders, no, these people would be just fine.  They were fine before they found her, they were fine when she wasn’t here, and they’d be fine with her gone.  They just had to get their bearings, just as everyone in a new situation had to.  They would be just fine.

Walking over to Sparks, she asked quietly, “Who can show me where they saw…my patient?”  She noticed that none of them had used Splinter’s name, and she did not want to give it to them.  She couldn’t remember if his name had ever been mentioned, she’d been too preoccupied with the mutants in front of her, and when she wasn’t preoccupied with them, she was basking in Splinter’s presence beside her, like small waves of warmth from the sun coming out from the clouds.

Sparks nodded.  “Anser,” he pointed to a Canada goose mutant, “can take you.”

The goose saw them, and came over, his body waddling slightly as he did so.  “Can you take me to where you saw the rat that was with me when we came here the first time?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he said, “it is a little a way from here.  We will be gone for a few hours.”

She followed him to one of the exits and slapped Arcos’ shoulder as she passed him on the way out.  “Anser is going to show me something,” she told him.  “I will be gone a while.”

Arcos nodded at her absently, and went back to what he was doing.

They walked for a long time in silence, and Phoenix tried to listen to the place in her head where the poetry came, where the unbidden thought came, to hear something, anything.  Every step she took into the sewer made her more and more nervous.  What if she did find him?  What if she found him and wasn’t able to do anything to help him?  What if she found him and made him worse by trying to help?

“What happened to your husband?” the goose asked, bringing her out of her thoughts.

He had called Splinter her husband, and her mind went down a strange, emotionless tunnel of thoughts at the surprise of it.  Why would he refer to him as her husband, when everyone else used a much less committal word?  Oh yes, geese mate for life, geese are one of those species who are the epitome of partnership commitment.  Of course he would see a mate as a husband or wife.

“He isn’t my husband,” she said gently.  “And I am not entirely sure what happened to him.”  It is only an almost lie, she told herself, the ‘entirely’ made it truth, didn’t it?  “He had blood poisoning for a long time, from the sewer water.  He was constantly fighting a fever…” she let the words hang, not knowing what else to say, what else she wanted to say.

The goose looked down at her, using only his little goose-shaped head perched on his long neck.  “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

“Me, too,” she crooned.  A few more minutes of silence passed, before she decided to change the subject.  She had to start thinking of something else!  “How long have you been a mutant?”

“Not very long,” he said.  “A little more than a year, I guess.”

“Were you kidnapped by the aliens?” she asked.

He shook his head.  “I didn’t know anything about the aliens before they took over the city.  It just sort of happened.”

She looked up at him, and smiled at him in the dim light.  “Would you mind telling me about it?”  After a quick pause, she added, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.  I just like to hear about that kind of thing.”

She saw the side of his beak stretch into a smile.  “That’s how you keep on top of things.”

“No,” she shook her head.  “The more I know, the more I can help people.”  That’s an almost lie too, she heard herself say in her head.

But it isn’t an entire lie, she argued back.  That makes it OK.

Does it?

“I was just caught and tagged, like every year,” he said.  “I was released back to join my flock, when something wet and gooey crashed on us.”  He took a moment, as if gathering his thoughts.  “Then I was falling, and when I hit the ground, I had these.”  He held up his hands.  “Three other of my flock were splashed with the goo, too.”

“Mutagen ooze,” Phoenix said sympathetically.

He nodded. 

“Where are the rest of your flock that were mutated also?”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “We were separated shortly after that.”

“They may still be out there then!”  Phoenix’s voice was bright.  “They might be looking for you!”

Anser looked down at her again, pity in his eyes.  “Maybe.”  He pointed to a spot in the tunnel where a pile of dark debris lay.  “This is where we saw your mutant.”

She stopped and looked at the spot, biting her bottom lip.  “What was he doing?”

“Tearing that up,” Anser pointed to the pile.  When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Do you want us to capture him when we see him again?”

“No,” she said firmly.  “I want you to leave him alone.”

Anser nodded, pity in his eyes again.

She walked over to a pile of black debris, and saw that it was mixed with electrical wires.  She bent down to examine it, and saw pieces of black cloth, then an unmistakable round screen.  The eye of one of those ninja robots.  She held it up, confused.  “What are these doing down here?”

“What are those?” Anser asked.

“They’re weird robot ninjas,” she said.

“Weird robot ninjas?” his voice was highly incredulous.

“Yes,” she said, not looking up at him, “weird robot ninjas.”  She looked around, still holding the eye screen.   “I wonder what they’re doing down here.”

“Your rat took good care of them,” Anser said, bending down next to her.

She smiled, a feeling of pride flowing through her.  She had no right to feel proud, she knew, she had nothing to do Splinter’s taking care of anything.  “Yes, he did, didn’t he?”

Anser looked at her closely.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened when you found him?” she asked.  It doesn’t make any difference, she told herself.

But I want to know.

What good does it do to know, numskull?

Phoenix tried to ignore her own voice in her head, and concentrate on the place where the poetry came.  But it was silent.

You just want to torture yourself…

“We were just on a supply run,” Anser said, “and we walked in on him.  He was tearing this up,” he pointed.  “When we approached him, he hissed.  We kept going—“

“You approached him when he hissed?” Phoenix interrupted him.  “Do you not know what it means when a rat hisses?”

Anser didn’t look pleased, “Yes, I do.  We tried to approach him, and he jumped at us.  He knocked my companion down, and then ran off down the tunnel.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

She heard a skitter to the side of them, a rat skitter.  She bend down and held her hand out in the direction she heard it from.  “Was there anyone or anything with him?” she asked.

“No,” Anser said, looking at her as if she were crazy.

The rat, a plain brown one, came out of the shadows toward her, sniffing carefully.  It was skinny, with wide, dark brown eyes.

“Were there any rats with him?” she kept her hand outstretched.

“What?”

“Were there any rats with him?  Plain ones.  Like this one?”  The rat reached her finger, and twitched its nose at the tip of it.

“No,” Anser said.  “He was totally alone, except for the weird robot ninjas.”

The rat made a noise, and bit the end of Phoenix’s finger.  She jerked it away automatically, and the rat ran off, chittering, probably angry that it had been tricked into biting a finger and not food.  She stuck her finger in her mouth and tasted blood, but when she took it out, the cut was gone.  “Good,” she said.  “Let’s get back.”

If he was alone, if no rats were with him, perhaps he wasn’t with the Rat King, after all.  Perhaps he was just a misfortunate mutant that had turned into a rat.

You know that isn’t true, she heard herself think.  He’s a rat man.  Who else would he be with? 

She didn’t want him to be with anyone.  No, that wasn’t true at all.  She wanted him to be with **her**.

Damn it! She yelled in her mind, letting out a loud exhale as she did.

“Are you alright?” Anser asked.

“I’m fine,” she said in an annoyed voice.

No sooner had the words come out of her mouth, then she heard a soft, “dthmp” in front of her.  She stopped abruptly, and the shape of two men were suddenly in front of them, dark, in black hoods, with large, bug-like screens over the eyes.

“Weird robot ninjas,” Anser said in a frightened voice.

Phoenix had trouble swallowing her heart, beating at a mile a minute, was in her throat.  “Oh, dear.”


	83. Chapter 83

Phoenix heard a slight whiz in the air, and immediately Anser let out a grunt of pain.  At the same time, the unbidden thought boomed in her head, _Drop_!

She did as she was told, and felt the air above her move as the same whiz said overhead.   She rolled to the side, her shoulder pained as she did, and flattened herself against the wall.  She could barely see what she was doing, the black of the ninja robots clothing blending in with the dark of the sewer.  She jumped about the tunnel, like a frog trying to escape a bird, as things were thrown at her.  She felt the air moving all around her in little rivulets, and she had no idea how she wasn’t getting hit by whatever was being flung at her.

Anser, in answer to his being hit, lunged on one of the ninja-robots.  He stabbed his beak at it over and over in the head and neck.  He wrapped his long, feathered arms about it, trapping the robot’s arms to its side.  The robot wrapped one of its legs around the goose’s and sent them both tumbling to the floor.

Phoenix felt a sting in her thigh, and for a moment was sure she’d been skewered by something.  She jumped again, as soon as she landed, back the way she’d just come, and realized she had only been nicked when the sting continued and did not change to a blasting pain.   Instead of throwing things at her, the robot lunged at her in a graceful arch, landing next to her just as she leapt out of the way onto the other side of the tunnel.  She used her momentum to jump upward, and then grabbed the tubing at the top.

Anser and the robot he was fighting rolled on the floor, with the goose mutant still pounding into the robot’s head and neck.  The robot’s hand became a circular saw, but it was unable to move its arm to be able to use it.  Anser rolled again, to trap the saw below them on the concrete.  There was an awful scraping sound as it spun against the concrete beneath it.  An electrical sparking sound started to come from the side of it against the floor.  Anser kept pecking, causing little bits of black cloth to go flying.

Phoenix hoisted herself up on the pipe she’d grabbed, crouching to keep from banging her head.  In a moment, the robot was in front of her.  She dropped back down the ground, and as soon as her feet hit it, she did two back somersaults to try to gain some distance between herself and the robot.

Anser’s beak broke through one of the eye screens, revealing a set of wires behind the glowing, pink light.  He dug his bill into the hole he’d made, and began to tear out the wires as he grabbed them within the tomia on his beak.  He continued to tear until the robot stopped moving.

 As The Phoenix’s hand landed on her second somersault, her fingers landed on something cold and flat.

 _Throw it,_ the unbidden thought said forcefully.

She curled her fingers around it as she came up, and saw it was a throwing star.  How was she supposed throw this?  The robot was already on the floor, as if it could tell what she was going to do before she did it.  She grabbed her sling from its loop at her waist, and placed the throwing star in the pocket of the band.  She pulled it back with her hurt shoulder, letting out a cry of pain as she let the shot go.

It hit the ninja robot in the middle of the forehead.  A large spark came out of the place where she’d hit it and the eye screens, then it fell to the floor.

She took in several deep breaths, and put her hand to her shoulder.  It didn’t feel that any of the broken stitches were bleeding.    She walked over to the robot, and looked down in disbelief. 

Anser came over to her, “Are you OK?”

“Yeah,” she answered, bending down and trying to take the throwing star out of the robot’s forehead.  She tugged, and it wouldn’t budge

Anser bent down and tugged at it and it came out easily.  He handed it to her.  “I see now why your rat was tearing these things up.”

Your rat…the words bounced in her forehead.  But he isn’t my rat, she thought.  His isn’t even his turtles’ rat!  He’s in the sewer being no one’s rat!

 _Him_ , the unbidden thought said.

Stop thinking about him!  She wanted to slap herself with frustration. 

“I want more of these,” she held the throwing star up.  “They’re good to use!”

“I am sure there are quite a few around here,” Anser said scathingly. 

Phoenix began looking around, her head whipping about.  Not seeing anything, she bent down and began going through the cloth of the robot.  She found two more and smiled broadly.

“You can take the one that is lodged in my chest,” Anser’s voice was contemptuous.

Her eyes went wide in embarrassment, her cheeks grew hot with her awful faux pas.  “Oh!” she jumped up, and looked about her person to find a place to put the throwing stars.  She tucked them in her belt and then reached out to touch Anser’s chest.  Moving the feathers aside, she found the throwing star, touched it gently where it was embedded in his skin, but didn’t remove it.  “We need to get you back to the juncture, so I can deal with that properly.”

She turned to go, and as she twisted, one of the blades of the throwing star cut her in the hip.  “Ow!”

“What?” Anser was almost panicked.

“The throwing star cut me.”  She took one out of her belt.  She felt hot wet at her waist, and clucked her tongue.   “I’m going to have to bleach my shirt now.”  Looking at the projectile, she sighed and threw it into the robot, where it stuck.  “That’s fun,” she chuckled.  Then she sighed again.  “I have nowhere to carry these things without stabbing myself.”  She took one out and handed it to Anser.  “Want to throw one?”

The goose smiled slightly, and embedded it in the robot who had struck him.  “That is fun,” he said.

Phoenix did it with the third one, and dusted her hands off.  “Time to get you fixed up.”

It took them a while to get back, but they did without incident.  She immediately went to work removing the throwing star from under his feathers.  It was the first time that she didn’t want to do it.  She wanted to shoot more throwing stars at things with her slingshot.  What’s the matter with you, woman? she scolded herself.

Her children and a group of Inleters came about them to hear their story.  She began it before Anser could, to deliberately leave out that he was taking her to where he last saw Splinter.  For some reason, she wanted to keep that to herself.

“What were they doing down here?” Medusa asked.

“I asked the same question,” Phoenix said as she sewed Anser’s chest.  “I can’t imagine what there is for them down here.”

“Unless they’re looking for people who escaped the invasion,” Sparks suggested.

“What do aliens need with ninja robots?” Anser asked.

“What does anyone need with ninja robots?” Russe retorted.

“Mutant ninjas,” Arcos muttered.

Phoenix paused in her sewing, her heart jumping.

“You’ve seen these before?” Anser looked down at Phoenix, a dubious note in his voice.

“We’ve fought them before,” Arcos told him.  “A long while ago.”

“Down here?”

“No, up top,” Arcos replied.  “In a pretty building.”

Aries chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Sparks asked.

“It was a very pretty building,” Aries told him.

“Too bad the memories that go with it aren’t as pretty,” Medusa muttered.

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Sparks looked from each of the children to Phoenix.

All three of her kids looked at her.  They want me to explain, she thought.  I don’t want to explain.  She didn’t have it all figured out in her own mind yet, how was she supposed to explain it to these people.

“There are…ninjas in the city,” Phoenix said slowly.

“I remember that on the news,” Russe said.

Phoenix nodded.  “We have had some run-ins with some ninjas,” she continued.

“Other than these weird robot ninjas?” asked Anser.

“Yes,” she answered quickly.  “We’ve fought mutant ninjas.”  She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes solidly focused on Anser’s wound, and trying to keep her mind focused on what she was saying.  Don’t say too much, she told herself.   “We have fought some mutant ninjas in the streets, just out and about.” 

That sounds so stupid, who goes about fighting ninjas in the streets out and about?

You do, she answered herself.

“We also had a type of…battle with some.  That’s where we encountered the weird ninja robots.”

“You had a battle with weird ninja robots, and you’ve encountered ninja mutants out and about?” Sparks voice had the tint of sarcasm attached to it.

She felt a sudden burst of anger at his tone, and flashes of encounters came to her mind all at once: Leonardo holding his sword above her son’s head; she being kicked across the building by Raphael, and then another flash of Medusa holding him in her coils and throwing in under a dumpster; she standing on a fire escape flanking a beautiful old building and firing pinched off bullet shells until her shoulder and arms were numb, only to have them ping off of metal, and be unable to hit the living things on the ground below her; of her aiming at that same slingshot at Michaelangelo, threatening to shoot him dead; of Splinter’s many tiny, sharp things that she did not know the names of and had not the courage to ask their names; of watching him move, like he was not made of the same physical stuff as the rest of them, beautiful and frightening.

She looked up from Anser’s chest, and glared at Sparks, “I do not have to justify anything to you.”  The raccoon took a step back, surprise on his face.  She felt Anser stiffen under her fingers.  “You can do what you like with the information you’re given.”  She did a last, quick stitch on the goose, and then stood up, placing the needle on the little tray Ardillo had brought with the medical things.  “There are ninjas roaming around New York City, some of them are robots, and some of them are mutants, and all of them will turn you into a pincushion.”

 She dipped her hands in the bowl of pine water near here and wiped them off.  “This is the last time I’ll be coming for a check in.  If one of you is hurt, you’ll have to go to Ardillo.”  She looked down at the chipmunk.  “If he doesn’t know how to help you yet, you’ll have to come to me.”

“How do we know where to find you?” Sparks asked, his voice rising in a kind of panic.  “We don’t know where you live!”

Aries opened his mouth to answer, but Phoenix held up her hand.  She was glad he didn’t know where they were, and she was glad that some of them had come to the Haunted Warehouse to find it destroyed.  It meant they wouldn’t come back there.  “The same way people found me before all this happened.”  Her voice was crisp and unkind.  “I’ll be in the city somewhere.  Luck will lead you to me.” 

“I don’t believe in luck,” Sparks said.

“Luck is what got you here,” she said scathingly.

“Luck?” the panic in his voice dissipated slightly, the sarcasm coming back.  “Luck is what turned us into freaks?  Luck is what makes us have to live in a sewer?”

“Luck is the reason you are alive, period,” she retorted.

“Luck doesn’t exist.”

“Then you probably won’t ever find me,” Phoenix turned and walked out.

 


	84. Chapter 84

“You can’t be serious,” Arcos said.  “You’re going out to clinic?”

The sun was setting, and Phoenix donned both of her messenger bags.  They had come out of the destruction of the Haunted Warehouse with only minor damage.  A few well-placed stitches and they were good as new, or at least as good as they were before.   “Yes,” she said.  “I am serious.”

“I’ll go with you, Mama,” Aries stood up, and went to join her where she was getting her slingshot, bullet pouch, and knife. 

“No, you won’t,” she said calmly.

“What?” he stopped short.

“You can’t go by yourself,” Medusa said.

“Yes,” her calm was affectative.   She took a deep breath to maintain the illusion of it.  “I can.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Arcos said.

“No,” she drawled, finally turning to her children.  “It isn’t.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t?” Medusa’s black eyes were wide.

“It isn’t any more dangerous than it was before the invasion.”

“Have you been smoking that stuff you make for the homeless people?”  Aries asked.

Her mouth twisted, and then stretched into a fake smile.  “No,” she said very slowly.  “It is probably safer to be out now than it was before the invasion.  Before the invasion,” her voice was condescending, as if she were talking to idiots, “there were thugs, and gang members, and police, and Kraang, and mutant ninjas.  Now, there are Kraang, and mutant ninjas.  That’s a lot less than there was before.”

“There are ninja robots,” Arcos corrected. 

“Now,” she corrected herself, “there are Kraang and ninja robots.”

The three of them stared at her.

“I’m not going out to fight anyone,” she said, her annoyance finally come though.  “My shoulder is fine now, everything has been perfectly quiet, and it is time for me to go out and do my job again.”

“Then we get to do ours, and play superhero,” Arcos spat back at her.

“Yes,” she agreed, “you do.”  All three of her children looked at her with shock.  She went to the garden window and put her leg over it to jump to the roof.  “Be careful, don’t engage anything you can’t handle.”

“You be safe too, Mama,” Medusa said softly.

She stopped and looked at them apologetically.  “Do some recon,” she said, “and tomorrow we’ll come up with a plan to start retaking the city.”  Then she was out the window and on the rooftops, listening for where the unbidden thought would tell her to go.

She leapt from roof to roof, swinging on fire escapes and clothes lines that hadn’t been used in months to reach those that were too far away for a jump.  It felt good to move her body, move in different ways, sometimes her body would ache dully with the lack of physical movement of in her life.  The slow motion of yoga poses, or the rhythmic pattern of the uneven bars just didn’t cut it.  There was only so much one could do on a set of uneven bars, even with her advanced skill in gymnastic.  Twisting and turning and leaping and spinning on the roofs of NYC was more calming than anything else she’d done in a while.

 _On the street,_ the unbidden thought told her, so she landed on a fire balcony and walked down the steps as quietly as she could with her clod-hopper boots.  She simply meandered then, the unbidden thought not giving her any direction in which to go. 

Now on the ground, she began to get nervous.  This was the first time she’d been alone in almost a quarter of a year.  She wanted to be alone.  She needed to be alone, but it felt strange now that she had it.  As she walked along, she sometimes felt that there were other people walking about, but there was no one around.  In other places, the city was completely dead, it felt as if she were the only thing alive in the entire world, with nothing but the wind blowing gently through the streets.  The quiet either way was eerie, and she had a hard time listening to her inner ears, as she concentrated so hard on her outer ones.

If she met with any ninja robots, she wouldn’t hear them before she saw them.  If there were still mutant ninjas about, she wouldn’t hear them before she saw them.  If there were soldiers patrolling the streets, she’d hear them.  If there were Kraang robots anywhere, she’d definitely hear them.  They were as loud as refrigerators.  Detecting 50% of your potential enemies isn’t too bad, she tried to console herself. 

She stopped and sat down on a bus bench, and listened.  No sound came to her, either inside or outside her head.  It was empty, just like that place in her stomach.

She’d thought a great deal about what it was that she’d felt ripped out of her.  It was a violent parting, mimicking the physical parting with Splinter.  No, she finally decided, it wasn’t a parting.  It was a taking.  Somehow, something had grabbed at her insides, and pulled something out.  She couldn’t decide what it was.  She didn’t know if it was Splinter, if it was the Universe, or if it was she that had torn it out and thrown it away.  However it was taken from her, it was gone, and it left a place that was just as barren as the city around her.

She heard a scraping of metal against concrete, and saw the manhole cover in the street behind her being to lift.  She bolted behind a large garbage can and squatted, watching.

“Master Shredder is going to be very unhappy,” she heard an accented voice say, before she saw anything emerge from the hole.  The voice sounded South American.  “We found Karai and then she got away.”  A giant fish, with a backpack on, and breathing devices where his gills would be climbed out of the sewer.  Attached to the base of his tail were a pair of metal legs.  

The breakdancing fish, from The Battle of the Pretty Building!

A deep, scratchy voice replied, “We’ll find her again, and next time we’ll get her.”  The skeletal dog came up out of the sewer, who had participated in the battle as well.

“What are we going to tell him?” the fish asked.

“The truth,” said the skeletal dog.  “Another group of mutants are trying to catch her, too.”

“Master Shredder is still going to have our hides,” the fish said.

“Your hide, maybe,” the dog muttered.  The fish was about to retort, when the dog said, “Be quiet.  I smell something.”

“What?” the fish said.

“A human,” the dog said slowly, turning toward the trash can.

No, no, no, no, no, Phoenix repeated in her head.  Don’t smell me.  Don’t smell me.  If she had to take on both of these mutants, she knew there was no way she could win.  Maybe with one.  If she managed to get in a lucky shot.  A very lucky shot.  She remembered watching them fight in the battle, taking down Gray Cat after Gray Cat, all of them better fighters than she could ever hope to be.

The dog took a step toward the trash can.

 Please, please don’t be smelling me, she prayed.

“Ah,” the fish waved his hand, “so you smell a human.  What is one human going to do?  I’m tired.  Come on, we have hides to be flayed.”

“Uh,” the dog grunted, turning away from her.  She held in her sigh of relief.  “Might as well get it over with.”   The two of them began walking down the road.

She watched them go, and then let out her breath in a great gust.  She crept out from behind the trash can and bolted to the other side of the street, so she was in an alley between two buildings.  With a pounding heart, she put her back against the brick of the wall behind her.  Well, she told herself, that answers the question as to whether there are still mutant ninjas wandering the city. 

She walked the back alleys for about a half an hour, having trouble getting her mind to slow down.

Those two mutants were looking for someone named Karai, not for Splinter.  In the Battle at the Pretty Building, there were no Turtles, and no Splinter.  She felt she could make a pretty good jump in thought that the mutants at the Pretty Building and Splinter and his Turtles were not part of the same group.  Whenever they’d encountered the Turtles, they’d been examining canisters of mutagen.  That made a pretty good case for the Turtles, and therefore Splinter to be aligned with the Kraang.  That meant that the Pretty Building mutants were not working for the Kraang.  But how could Splinter and his Turtles be working for the Kraang and the Rat King?  Splinter had to be with the Rat King, he was a rat person.  For all she knew, she helped make him a rat person with the blood the Rat King had taken from her.  Did that mean the Rat King was working for the Kraang?  Why would he be in the sewer experimenting on people if he was with the Kraang?  Why didn’t he just use the equipment at the TCRI building?

None of this made any sense, and she wanted to scream in frustration.

Stop thinking about it, she yelled at herself instead.  Stop thinking about Splinter.  You’re never going to see him again, you stupid, stupid woman!  How many times have you seen his Turtles?  And you never once saw him before finding him in the sewer.  He is nothing, he is nobody, he is your enemy, and you need to get a grip.

She felt the exact opposite of getting a grip.  She felt she was losing her grip, she’d felt that way for months now.

That’s why you’re out here, she said to herself, much more kindly.  To get a grip.

 _Here_ , said the unbidden thought.

She froze, and listened, with her ears, for any sounds.  There was nowhere to sit and wait, so she stood, listening.  Above her head, she thought she heard skittering.  It wasn’t rat skittering, and cats or dogs didn’t make that kind of sound.  She looked upward, and didn’t see anything, but it sounded like muted voices were coming from the roof.

She made her way to the fire escape, and slowly trod upward.  Her boots made it difficult to be quiet.  While each one was a thing of gothly beauty, coming up to just below her knee with steel toes and thick soles that made for excellent crushing devices, laced from just above the toe to the top and buckles accentuating the sides, neither of which kept the boot on as they zippered in the back, they were highly impractical for sneaking.  She did her best, going very carefully, and freezing whenever she made a slight clank on the metal.  No faces ever emerged from the side of the roof, or from any of the windows, so she kept going.  The voices got louder, though no clearer.  They were high pitched and chattery.  She poked her head up just so she could see above the ledge of the roof.

A broad smile broke on her face.  “Oh!” she exclaimed, louder than she meant to, and climbed up onto the roof.

A murder of crow mutants turned and looked at her.

Immediately she was enveloped by black feathery arms, so that she could not see the night around her.  She felt her hair being pulled out of her hair sticks, each beak pecking her scalp ever so slightly in greeting as they did so.  When she could catch a winged arm, she would squeeze gently, and even managed to press her cheek against someone’s though she wasn’t entirely sure whose it was.  The glow that was not a glow appeared, so it seemed that an almost white light came from each arm, or body, or beak.  A satisfaction filled her chest, like that of the wings of her firebird wrapping itself around her, dripping flames into her belly that had been empty for the past weeks.  The crows’ black, glossy feathers seemed even glossier in the not-glow in the night.   Their black, beady eyes, only able to be a little expressive in each face looked to her as if they were truly the windows to their souls, each shone with excitement and relief.  Even their course voices, something that could never be called pretty, hit her ears to turn into a sound of delight in her head.  She looked to each creature, thinking it was a thing of beauty in and of itself, a manifestation that only it would ever be. 

When their cawing began to change from cattering greetings to a garish asking of questions, she put her finger to her mouth and said, “Shhhhhh!”  It did no good, so in a harsh whisper she spat, “Shush, all of you!  There are bad people afoot.”

That shut the entire murder up.

“I saw two not so nice mutants a little while back,” she explained.

“We’ve seen all kinds of not nice mutants,” one said.  “They’re all over the city.”

“They keep going into the sewers,” said another.

“To find Karai.”

“Karai doesn’t want to be found, I don’t think.”

“They’ve been looking since the streets were emptied.”

“Wait!” she waved her hands, trying to hush the group of them.  “Who is Karai?”

“I don’t know,” said the leader of the murder.  “But they want her bad.”

“Karai is a her, then?” Phoenix asked.

“Yep,” he said.  “And she’s in the city somewhere.”

“Or the sewer.”

“Why is she in the sewer?”  What was it with mutants and sewers? Phoenix thought.

“I don’t know,” said another one. 

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“We listen,” said a crow in the back disdainfully.  “And we watch.”

Of course they listen!  Phoenix’s smile grew brighter, and she reached out for the first crow she could and squeezed its hands in between hers.  Crows, not-mutated, were smart and curious creatures.  They were the smartest member of the entire class Aves.   This murder she was with could articulate in a way that a non-mutated crow never could.   She silently thanked the human who was feeding them before they had gotten into that canister of mutagen they’d found.   Phoenix had always found their complaining irritating, they always were sure they had the worst illness that their symptoms would show.  But that showed just how smart these people were!  They listen, and they watch!

“Have they said anything about finding someone named Splinter?” she asked in a hurry.

“No,” the all answered in unison.

 “Have you ever heard anyone say anything about a Splinter?”

The group chattered for a moment, and then all shook their heads in a no.

“Alright,” she said, going through her bags.  She gave them a bottle of antiseptic wash, and a bag of feverfew with instructions on how to use it.

“What happened to the little bottles you used to have of it?” one of them asked.

“They’re all empty,” she said with a chuckle.  The murder didn’t seem to get her joke, “I need alcohol or vinegar or honey to make a tincture,” she said.  “That’s what was in the bottles.  I don’t have anything of those things, so you have to make it as a tea.”

“Does it taste as nasty as a tea as it does as a tincture?”

“Yes,” she said.

“We’ll find you some alcohol, or vinegar, or honey,” the leader promised.

“You do that,” she promised back, “and I will make you the first set of tinctures of everything I have.”

She crept down from the building, after hugging each member of the murder, and telling them to stay safe, and stay quiet.  They promised to do the first, but immediately disregarded the second as soon as she was out of sight.

 She decided to head home, she’d had enough excitement for her first night out alone.  She felt a great rush of relief.  It didn’t make sense why, but for some reason, it seemed to turn the clock back a little for her.  No one she knew had heard of Splinter before she’d seen him, and still, the mutants she’d come across afterward didn’t know of him either.  It helped to cut that little moment of time in the sewer out from the rest of her life, to make a true respite.  That seemed to make the empty place in her much easier to bare. 

The arms of the firebird tightened around her with each step home she took, and the glow that was not a glow brightened the darkened and empty city, and to her, the night looked beautiful.


	85. Chapter 85

“Don’t lay an egg, Medusa!”

“I’ll lay a knock on your head, Aries!’ Medusa lashed her tail threateningly.

“Shut up, both of you,” Arcos waved his hand.  “I smell something.”

“Yeah, it’s call books,” Medusa snapped, her skinny arms waving among the shelves of books that surrounded them in the library.

“What does us talking have to do with you smelling?” Aries asked at the same time.

“Because I smell mutants.”

Both the snake and the ram gasped.

“What kind of mutants?” Medusa whispered, her voice full of hope.

“Not Grey Cat mutants,” he whispered. 

Medusa flicked her tongue.  “All I smell is books,” her voice was filled with disappointment.  “I don’t feel anything either.”  Her brother was beginning to get too big for his britches in his ‘I’m the Leader, listen to me,” position he seemed to have taken the mantel of.  She understood they needed that kind of thing when they were fighting as a group. 

They weren’t fighting right now.

Having not found anything except Kraangdroids of various types, they had decided to make their recon mission a supply run.  One of the first places they decided to go was a library they’d seen.  Medusa insisted she desperately needed some entertainment in the evening, and she wanted their mother to read a new book to them.  She was tired of the old ones from the rubble of the Haunted Warehouse.  A few new romance novels wouldn’t be remiss in her eyes, either. 

Arcos shook his head, and looked around them.  “Come on,” he motioned for his siblings to follow him.  “I don’t like the feel of this.”

“What, you’ve become all psychic all of a sudden?” Aries jeered.  “The boogie man is following us?”

Arcos ignored him and sneakily, or as sneakily as a giant bear mutant could, crept down the isle. In doing so, he knocked over a book on hovercrafts that was precariously placed on the edge of shelf.  Its normally soft thud sounded like a crash in the quiet dark of the library.  Arcos froze with a grimace.

“It’s a book,” Aries said, rolling his eyes.  He took another one off of the shelf, and looked at the title—Crossing the Midwest in Your Minivan—and threw it on the floor.

Arcos jumped.

“Boo,” said Aries.

Another clunk sounded at the other end of the library.

Aries eyes went wide as he stared at his brother.

A whoosh sounded behind them, and when they looked, they saw Medusa’s tail disappear behind the adjoining bookshelf.

“You guys are creeping me out,” Aries said.

“Shhhhh,” Medusa hissed from the next isle over.

“It smells like snake, Medusa,” Arcos whispered.

“That **is** Medusa!” Aries whispered back, annoyed.

Another bump, this time closer, made Aires start.

“That wasn’t Medusa,” Arcos took his sledgehammer out slowly, and began to creep down the corridor of books.  When he got to the edge of isle, he poked his head out and looked both ways.

Aries followed his brother’s lead, and slid his axe from his back as he inched behind him.  “Do you see anything?” Aries pressed himself against Arcos’ back.

“No,” Arcos said, emerging carefully into the main walkway.  His eyes were roaming back and forth constantly.  He sensed something, but couldn’t see anything around them.   “But I smell seafood.”

“Seafood?” Aries was no longer whispering.

“Trichichaachii!”

Both boys gasped and jumped at the sound that came from behind them, turning in the air and brandishing their weapons to come to face to face with their quarry.

It was a shrimp mutant.

It was about three feet tall, with a strange helmet that covered its mouth as well as its head.  It made the same chittering sound again, as if yelling at them in some underwater tongue.

“What the hell?” Aries lowered his axe.

“You’re saying it in English now?” Arcos kept his hammer up.

“Quoi l’enfer?” Aries sang sarcastically.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how you say it,” Arcos’ voice was still very soft.

The little shrimp-in-a-helmet put its hands on its hips and chittered again.

“What are you going do?” Aries asked it, taking a step forward and bending down.  “Jabber us to death?”

Two more came clambering out of the isles and stood with the one that was jabbering them to death.

“This is totally getting creepy,” Arcos said, keeping his eyes on the shrimp-in-helmets.  “Medusa!” he called.

No one answered.

The first shrimp-in-a-helmet let out a loud gabble and leapt at Aries, landing on his face.

Both boys screamed.

“Get it off, get it off!!” Aries began to dance around as the shrimp-in-a-helmet began to pummel him in the cheeks with its little fists.

The other two shrimp-in-helmets jumped at Arcos.  He swung his hammer and missed both of them, as they latched onto his legs.  They began to flail their antennae against his thighs, and he shook each leg in turn trying to get them off.  “This stings!” he cried, “Medusa, help!!”

Medusa had slipped through several of the isles, following the soft sound of something sliding.  She heard her brother whisper to her, “It smells like snake,” and now, with a flick of her tongue, she could smell it, too, the hint of a spice reminiscent of cinnamon with musk among the aroma of paper.  A soft, sssthhhhppp-ing sound came from above her head.  She glided the top half of her body back and raised herself up, to see another snake mutant on top of the bookshelf.

She is beautiful, Medusa thought.  Her eyes were a jade green, gorgeous and big, almond shaped with slitted pupils like her own.  She was an almost opalescent white, with lovely pale purple markings throughout her body.  Her elongated brow-ridges, almost glowing in the faint light, they were so perfectly white, stretched to the back of her large, elongated head.  She had a slight waist, which ballooned out to an obviously powerful body.   Her arms were skinny, like Medusa’s own, but unlike the boa constrictor, this snake had snake heads for hands.  The heads were not dissimilar to the one on her head, only simpler.  This girl was nowhere near as long as she was.  She was only 8, maybe 10 feet at most.  Her girth was also nothing compared to the boa’s, but she moved with the same grace and elegance that Medusa did.   She was smoothly scaled, and so striking that Medusa had to blink her own black eyes a few times to get her mind to come back to the moment.

Medusa raised herself slowly, so that she came to eyelevel with the snake on top of the bookshelf.  The eyes of the snake, so large and fetching, did not look like they were recognizing what she was seeing, but did watch Medusa carefully as she rose.  “Hello,” Medusa said gently.

The snake stared at her.

Medusa tried to move closer, so gently one may not have even noticed it, but the other snake tightened, and turned her head ever so slightly to the side.  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Medusa tried to make her voice sweet..  She held her hand out in the space between them.

The other snake looked down at it, and then at Medusa’s face.  A look of intelligence flashed in the jade green eyes, and she moved her head a little closer.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered, keeping her hand out, and remaining stock still.  “We’re friends.”

The snake reached out with one of its head-hands, and the tongue on it flicked, almost touching Medusa’s fingers.  “Frrrrriiiiiieeeeennnnnnddddddsssssssss?” she hissed out, so slowly that Medusa wasn’t quite sure if she was saying the word or just hissing.

“Yyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeesssssssssss,” Medusa hissed back in a similar way, and was surprised at how easy it was for her to do it.

Both of her brothers screamed then, the sound echoed through the library.  The pretty, white snake jumped down from the bookshelf and began to slither at an amazing speed through the isles.

Damn the two of them! Medusa seethed, following the snake as she fled.  She was positive she’d seen some sort of intelligence behind the eyes, if only for a moment.  The girl was fast, Medusa herself was having trouble keeping up with her, seeing only flashes of white from behind the dark of the shelves.

She emerged down the center isle and made a beeline for Aries and Arcos.  Neither of them saw her coming, each were fighting off what looked like shrimp-wearing-helmets.  Medusa kept her eyes on the white snake, who slithered through them as if they weren’t there, knocking a thrashing Aires, who had a little shrimp mutant on his face, to the floor.  Medusa barreled through them as well, her own body knocking down her other brother in her attempt to get past him.

“Medusa!” Arcos wailed.  “Get these things off me!”

“Not now!” she called, making a dash for the door to block the snake’s escape.

 Aries felt his feet being knocked out from under him, and when he tumbled to the floor, the shrimp-in-a-helmet scrambled from his face to his forehead.  “Gotcha!” Aries immediately rolled to all fours, and pounded his head in the carpeted floor of the library.  A crunching sound accompanied the release of the shrimp-in-a-helmet from his head, as it squished into the nap.  “Try and get that stain out, you little twerp.”  He stood up and looked at his brother, rolling about on the floor with two of the mutants attached to each leg.

“Help me, wool-for-brains!” he yelled.  “These things sting!”

Aries reached down and grabbed one and pulled it off of his brother’s leg, and then flung it against a bookshelf.  It turned in midair, used its legs to bounce off of the shelving unit, and launched itself at him.  “Not again!” Aries warned, swinging his axe and slicing it in two as it soared in the air, just before it reached him.

Arcos grabbed the one still on his leg, but couldn’t get a good enough hold on it to get it off.  If he bashed at it with his hammer he was going to crush his own leg.  He could see in the corner of his eye that the leg on his pants was torn from the other shrimp-in-a-helmet’s antennae.  “I liked these pants!” he moaned, taking his claws and trying to rake the mutant across the back.

It did no damage, but it did make the mutant let go of his leg.  He shook it, and it went rolling on the floor curled in a ball.  As it straightened out to leap at Arcos, Aries slicked it with his axe.  It let out an unceremonious cracking noise as he did so.

Medusa managed to make it to the door before the white snake did, bringing her in front of her path.  The white snake reared up and hissed, and Medusa held up her hands.  “We’re friends,” she said, her voice having a desperate lilt to it.

Medusa saw the loss of intelligence in the eyes, they were the eyes of an animal that didn’t know what it was doing.  A spitting sound hit her ears, and then her shoulder stung.  Looking down at it, her nostrils were filled with an acrid stench, as she saw the source of the stinging was an acid on her skin. 

The white snake slid right underneath her as she was distracted by her shoulder, and out the door.  Medusa twisted in on herself to follow her just as her brothers came running down the main book isle.

“Medusa!” Arcos yelled.

She ignored him and followed the white snake outside.

“There she is!” she heard a smooth accented voice say in the quiet of the night.  “Catch her!”

Looking to the source of the voice, she saw the fish from the Battle of the Pretty Building pointing at the white snake, who was reared up and hissing at it.  The bony dog from the battle was with him, he turned and looked at Medusa as she darted forward, rearing to a halt.

“Uh?” he looked from Medusa to the white snake, a confused look on his ghoulish face.

The white snake took the pause to curve back around away from the fish and dog and slither down a manhole the sewer.

Aries came clomping out of the library, stopping behind his sister.  “Not these people.”  His voice was exasperated.

Both the fish and dog turned their gazes to the ram.

Medusa took the distraction to dart down the manhole cover after the white snake.  She was positive now that the hiss had repeated her word, “friends”, that there was an intelligence in her eyes, if even for a moment.  That the girl was frightened out of her wits was obvious by her behavior.  She felt a compulsion to catch her.

Arcos came running up behind Aries and didn’t stop, “Forget about them,” he said, jumping down the hole after his sister.

“This is so not going to end well,” Aries followed his siblings.

 


	86. Chapter 86

Aries was knocked to the ground as soon as he landed on the floor of the sewer by a heavy force on his back.

 “That snake isn’t yours, Lambchop,” said a grizzled voice from above him.

He felt claws digging into his back, and bucked up, sending the mutant off of him.  “That snake is my sister.”  He turned, bringing his axe up as he did.

“The other snake,” it was the bony dog talking.

Aries saw him for a moment in the air, heading toward him, and then the dog’s foot hit his axe, sending the flat end of it into his chest.  He stumbled backward and hit the wall of the sewer tunnel.   “My sister wants that other snake,” he said, bringing his axe up and running at the dog.

“Too bad,” the dog replied.

A punch hit Aries in the shoulder near his throat, and sent him flying down the tunnel.

He heard a loud clunk as the fish with metal legs landed in the sewer tunnel.  “Which way did they go?” he asked.

Aries had trouble getting air into his lungs, and the darkness around him was beginning to dance in tiny stars about him from the punch.

“That way,” the dog bounded past Aries, leaving him heaving for breath on the floor as he ran down the tunnel.

The fish walked up to him casually, looking down at him with shiny eyes.  “You know,” he said in his heavy accent, “it isn’t nice to try to take things that don’t belong to you.  Your sister isn’t going to like learning that lesson.” 

Aries managed to let out a laugh, even if it was a gasping one.  “Try teaching my sister a lesson,” he said.  ‘I dare you.”

The fish drew back up one of his metallic feet and brought it down hard on the ram’s chest. 

Any air that was left in Aires chest was now gone as his lungs deflated and the blackness around him became complete.

Arcos had to follow Medusa with his nose more than his eyes in the dark of the sewer.  “What are you doing?” he called in front of him, as he heard a hard clunk coming from the tunnel behind him.

“Wait!” he heard his sister say.  “Don’t be scared!”  Her voice was imploring.

Arcos heard a heavy clunking behind him, the sound of a heavy footed running.  Just as he thought, He’s not going to catch me, he felt a hard impact on the middle of his back, sending him flying forward.  He knew that the clunking had not been just behind him, it couldn’t have been that that hit him.  He rolled over onto his front, just to see the skeletal dog from the Battle of the Pretty Building coming at him.

He barely had enough time to react.  He swung his hammer in front of him, and the skeletal dog dodged it easily, as if it were a child trying to strike him.  The dog leapt, and rammed into Arcos’ chest, sending him sprawling.  He then jumped onto the bear’s chest.  “You don’t need to go any further, Teddy Bear,” his gravelly voice dripped as he stuck his nose close to Arcos’.  “We’ll take it from here.”

“Only my mother calls me Teddy Bear!” Arcos’ own grizzly voice yelled as he swiped one of his large paws at the dog’s face.  His claws raked over the dog’s cheek, catching some coarse fur as he did, and scraping against bony protrusions.

The move caused the dog to put his hands to his muzzle and cry out, leaving his chest open.  Arcos sat up and struck out at him at the same time, knocking him off.  The bear stood up, and swung his hammer at the dog.

The dog recovered so quickly, that he was able to maneuver effortlessly out of the way of the hammer.  He struck out with a fist to hit Arcos’ forearm, sending the hammer skidding across the concrete of the tunnel.

Arcos let out a grunt of pain, and twisted with the force with which he was hit.  “Aries!” he cried out, moving out of the way of a punch just in time, “A little help here.”

“I don’t think your little Lambchop is going to be able to help you,” said a thickly accented voice.  Arcos could smell the fish before he had spoken.  “He is indisposed.”

It took a moment for Arcos to understand what the fish was talking about; why in the world would Aries be indisposed.  Then it hit him what the fish meant.  He roared and rushed at the fish, his voice echoing down the tunnels in all directions.  He heard the dog laugh to the side of him somewhere, as he landed as the fish’s chest, knocking them both down with Arcos on top of him.

The bear felt the metal feet of the fish against his thighs, but even with the powerful push, the bear had enough of a hold on him that the buck caused by the fish’s kick against him didn’t dislodge him.   He growled and made to bite at the fish’s neck, but the fish twisted to the side and managed to cause them to roll, and Arcos missed.  The bear kept their momentum up, so that they rolled into the side wall, and the bear was on top of them once more.

“Get him off of me, you bone chewing mongrel!” the fish cried, slicing at Arcos.

The bear felt the familiar sting of a blade slicing at his skin, but it didn’t cut very far.  Thank goodness for winter undercoat, the bear thought.

“Looks like you’re doing just fine,” the gravelly voice of the dog said casually.   “You look cute wrestling with your Teddy Bear.”

Arcos snapped at the fish again, but it swiped at him with his tail.  The force of the hit caused him to buck up slightly, so his face was no longer at the fish’s, but rather above him.  The fish then made a lunge with his own teeth at Arcos’ chest, which he just managed to avoid by jumping off of him.

Arcos didn’t stop to think about why the dog wasn’t helping the fish.  He dropped to all fours, and ran at him again.  The fish flipped onto his hands, and began twirling and twisting and kicking so it looked like he was trying to win a breakdancing contest.   Arcos stopped in mid-run, skidding to a halt, and stood up again.  “What the hell is that?”

The dog, who was leaning against the side wall with his legs crossed began to howl with laughter.

Arcos felt he was in some sort of strange dream.  What kind of people were these?

“What is so funny?” the fish asked, standing up on his feet again.

The dog pointed at the fish, laughing so hard he was having trouble getting air into his lungs.  “I-I don’t know…..how many times….I’ve thought….the same….thing!!”

“Think on this then,” a decidedly feminine serpentine voice called out in the dark.

“Medusa!” Arcos felt a surge of relief.

The dog immediately stopped laughing and was on the ground tusselling with the boa constrictor’s enormous body in the flash of an eye.   She managed wrapped around him once, and then flung him down the tunnel. 

Her body, in one fluid motion, then darted at the fish.  The fish didn’t even have time to react as she coiled around him, as if she was going to crush him.  Instead, she kept herself horizontal, and tightened herself up as if in a spring.  Arcos heard the fish strangle for breath before Medusa shot him out of her body like a bullet from a gun.  The fish flew into the wall with a loud, squishy bang, and slunk down the floor unconscious.

“Girl,” said the gravelly voice of the dog a short distance down the tunnel.  “You’re going to pay for that.”

“No,” Medusa reared up, so her head was almost touching the top of the tunnel, her tongue flicking out dangerously.  “I don’t think I will.”

Arcos was thrown against the wall himself, knocked by a wave of his sister’s powerful body.  He lay here, propped against the concrete watching what was unfolding before him as if watching a movie.

The skeletal dog flew through the hair, his foot in front of him as if to kick her.  He landed before he reached her, though, and twisted on the ground, his other foot now aimed to strike at her.  His foot made contact with her just below the waist, and all she did was wave slightly down the rest of her body.   The dog stared at her with his mouth open.

“Was that supposed to hurt, doggie?” she hissed.

Then the two of them were a rush of body and limbs, punches and kicks and waves and tails.  Medusa did not have her whip out, she was obviously determined to fight this mutant hand to hand.  His hits made contact almost each time, the dog was surprisingly fast.  But his sister, with each retaliation, threw the dog about the sewer as if he were a pile of sticks.  The murderous look on her face made it seem all the more unreal.  He aimed a punch at her shoulder, and while it hit her, it seemed as if she didn’t feel it.  She just waved her enormous body and shoved him down the tunnel.  Finally, as if bored with playing, she caught him just after he landed a kick at her side, and crushed him against the side of the tunnel wall, the girth of her preventing him from moving.

“Go run to your pretty building and lick your wounds, mongrel,” she susurrated.  Arcos could see her pressing herself against the wall, and he waited for a crunching sound to come from the dog.  It didn’t.  When the dog went limp against her, she released him and let him fall to the floor.  “Where’s Aries?” she asked harshly, slithering past Arcos and back down the passage in the way they’d come in.

“He’s indisposed,” Arcos said slowly, picking up his hammer and looking at the two mutants who were now lying on the floor of the sewer.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

He ran after her.  “I’m guessing it means he’s been hurt?”  Once he’d caught up with her, he asked, “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Do what?” she didn’t even turn to look at him.

“That, back there…you kicked both of their asses with your bare hands!”

“I’ve always been able to do that,” she said. 

Arcos was silent for a moment, all of the sibling fights he’d gotten into with her suddenly taking on a different meaning.  “What happened to that girl?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I lost her,” Medusa said, not slowing down.  “She jumped in the water, and I couldn’t see well enough to keep up with her.” 

“Why did you follow her?” Arcos was beginning to get annoyed.  Why was she moving so quickly down the corridor?  The two mutants behind them weren’t waking up for a while, by the look of things.

“Because she was alone and scared,” his sister answered simply.

“How do you know she was alone?” he asked.  “She could have just been out by herself.”  After a moment’s thought, he added, “Or she could have been with those shrimp things.”

“She wasn’t with them,” Medusa said.  “She was hunting them.”

“What?  How do you know that?!” he demanded.

“Because they smelled tasty,” she answered.  “And she was frightened and alone.”

“How do you know she was alone?”  This knowing that his sister seemed to have was starting to disconcert him. 

She glanced at him, and then darted forward, so she was not next to him any longer.  “Because of the type of frightened she was.”

“And you know this how….?”  His sister was starting to sound an awful lot like his mother.

“Because I have eyes in my head,” she snapped, a hissing replica of The Phoenix’s voice coming from her mouth, “and I use them.  Unlike you, apparently.”  She slowed down, seeing Aries in the distance, walking toward them slowly, holding his chest.  “Are you OK?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” he said in a breathy voice.  “That fish hurts.”

“Yeah,” Medusa put her arm about her brother, and smiled, a completely different feeling from what Arcos was getting from her.  “That dog hurts too.”

 

 


	87. Chapter 87

The Phoenix watched the sun rise while sitting in her garden.  She couldn’t see the sun, with the buildings and the landscape, but she could see the sky lightening in the east, and imagine the sun emerging from the sea like Venus from the foam.  She readjusted the blanket that she wore around her shoulders to keep out the chilly pre-dawn, and took a deep breath.

This place, that was her sanctuary for almost twenty years, was a strange mix of familiar and unfamiliar.  Each of the plants, starting to grow with the arrival of spring, were in the same place they were every year.  Many of them were starting to grow much sooner than they ever had in the past.  With one of the buildings knocked down letting in more sunlight, the entire garden warmed up much sooner than she was used to.  The lack of seclusion made it a different place than her sanctuary of years earlier.  It had been a tiny little piece of privacy, once the ivy had grown over the walls.  Nothing could see in, and she could not see out, and even much of the noise, what little there was in the Haunted Warehouse district, was blocked by the living wall.  But now, with the expanse of the street available for her to see, and the garden available for anyone walking the street to see, that privacy was gone.  It left her feeling exposed and raw, no matter how much time she spent in the garden.  She had once been able to even nap in the sun, lying on the little remaining concrete.  The openness of the medicinal patch now made that impossible.

It was the unavailability of privacy that kept her from indulging in what her body wanted when she woke up in the mornings, every morning.  She consistently dreamt of Splinter, and even though she could only remember tiny snatches of the dreams, she awoke with a need in between her legs which was only made worse by the emptiness in her gut.   She would remember that one morning, waking up in his arms, her face almost pressed to his chest, and her insides would curl so strongly it took her breath away.

She would get up, each morning, burning with desire, and go to the garden to watch the sun rise.  The children now knew where she was, a new morning ritual being made.  As she waited for her body to recover from her arousal, she would wonder, in her doctor’s mind, why she reacted this way now, and not when she was with him?  Was she too scared?  Was she too worried about his health?  Was what the Grey Cats had always said about her correct, she was too good for a mutant?  Was she too aware that he, while he was a person, he was also an animal?   That now that he was no longer there, it was easy to say she wanted him, in a way she’d not wanted anyone for so, so long? 

She didn’t like to think that she was that shallow.  That wasn’t it, she would tell herself.  She still had a clear vision of what his body looked like, with nothing but his fur.  She still had a clear feeling of what his body felt like under the careful press of her hands.  She could count how many times he had touched her of his volition, without her initiating it, which meant she was the one who was touching him.  If she closed her eyes to block out any outside stimulus, she could still feel the ghost of his finger on her cheek as he wiped away one of her tears.  She remembered the moments she had wanted to take his muzzle in her hands and kiss his lips.  That had not been a sexual feeling on her part at the time, but it was hardly what she would have described as platonic.  She had thought his mix of rat and human was just perfect, like a puzzle that no one knew existed was put together and made him.  Thinking about him, all of him, the way he spoke, the way he moved, the way he smelled, the way he felt, did not make the wanting go away.  In fact, when she thought about it too much, even if it was in the middle of the day, her womb would jump, and she’d have to force herself to think of something else, it only made it worse.  And there was nothing she could do about it.  Not unless she spent a great deal of time in the bathroom, and that would look awfully suspicious.  Even Aries didn’t do that.

So here, in the mornings, alone, she would wait for the want to subside, and for the emptiness in her solar plexus to lessen.  Both did so faster every day, and neither one hurt as much as they did the day before.  In fact, sometimes, when she thought about the spaces in her body, or a picture of Splinter flashed in her mind, it would be almost pleasant.

The only thing that marred it, if her mind wandered to that place, was if he had ever felt the same way, with his emotional reserve, and his physical restraint, she couldn’t tell if he did or not.  After all, he had awoken her arms also, and simply released her when she’d gotten up from the sleeping mat.  But then, a little voice said in the back of her mind, he didn’t let go until _you_ moved to get up.

She shrugged off the blanket as the air warmed with the rising sun, and placed it on her lap.   The glow that was not a glow had faded, but the wonderful sense of satisfaction, of having the phoenix after which she’d accepted the name for herself wrap its wings about her, was still there.  With the warmth of the air about her, she smiled, and was thankful for the night before, when the black wings of crows had mimicked the flaming wings of the firebird.

The children had been waiting on her when she got home, all three of them bruised from a fight.  She hadn’t worried, or panicked, and this seemed to both disconcert and calm the children at the same time.  She was still in that highly contented place the murder had taken her to, and the unbidden thought whispered to her for the first time that night, _Trust._   And so she did.  She’d had tended to each one methodically, the black smudges in their glows about their bodies making it clear where they needed healing.  She’d pressed her hands against each of their bruises, and while the hurts were not fully healed, they all claimed they felt better once they’d been touched and had poultices wrapped about them.

They’d told her about their night, Arcos giving a detailed account of Medusa’s prowess.  Phoenix had smiled at her daughter in that far away way that she had, and stroked her head, and then kissed her at the end of her muzzle.  The unbidden thought almost seemed to say, _See?  Trust._   She was in such a fine mood, that she wasn’t even annoyed that all it said to her was one word answers and instructions.  Or even that it tried to tell her “I told you so.”

She had told them about hers, also.  “Mine was nothing as excited as yours,” she said when she’d finished.  “I guess we were closer to each other than we thought.  We ended up with the same information.”

“No,” Arcos said, “we got complimentary information.”

She smiled at her son, who nursed a bandage on his arm.  “It would appear that those two mutants are trying to catch that snake, and her name is Karai.”

“Mama,” Medusa said, several wrappings about her body where Phoenix had seen smudges from internal bruises, “that girl was so scared.”

“I would be scared too if I was being chased by those mutants,” Phoenix said.  She had purposely left out the part of her own encounter where the dog had been able to smell her, and the fish had diverted his attention.

“I wonder what they want with her,” Aries said, bathing his chest with a cold cloth dipped in juniper tea.

Phoenix shook her head, “I didn’t hear.  Only that they were going to have their hides flayed.”

“She was beautiful, Mama,” Medusa crooned.  “Her scales were like the color of the moon on a bright night.  And her eyes were the color of those little green stone animal carvings you find in the store windows.”

Phoenix raised her eyebrows in appreciation.

“She was so frightened, Mama,” Medusa repeated.  “Her eyes were full of fear, not the kind that makes you scared of what’s happening right then.  The kind that shows you’re afraid all the time,” her voice was empathetic.  “It pulled at my heart strings.”

“Yeah, so much so that you chasing her down got us strung out the dry,” Aries said.

“That’s hung out the dry, Lamb’s Ear,” his mother corrected.

“Strung, hung, same thing.”

“She seemed to understand what I was saying one moment, and then didn’t another.  I couldn’t just let her go,” Medusa said.

“No, Curly Que,” Phoenix agreed.  “You couldn’t.  No one should live in fear.  That’s…an awful way to live.”

“Do you think she…” Arcos seemed reluctant to say what was on his mind.

“What, Teddy Bear?” Phoenix prompted.

“…that she went crazy, kind of like…Splinter?”

There was a moment of tensious silence, as all three of the kids looked at their mother.   She chewed on her lip, and then shook her head.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “Maybe.  Maybe she was sick, too, and the animal took over.”

“Is that what happens when a mutant gets really sick, Mama?” Aries leaned forward, a disturbed look on his face.  “Do they become…an animal?  With no person in them?”

She smiled at him reassuringly.  “It would appear that way, Lamb’s Ear.”  She leaned forward, “But it can happen to humans too—if they get too sick, with the right kind of sickness, and they don’t get treatment, they go crazy.”

“I don’t want to go crazy,” he said.

She chuckled, “You aren’t going to go crazy.  Look at who your mother is.”

The ram smiled back at her adoringly.

“And your mother says,” she stood up, and began loosening her corset, “that it is time for bed.”

“No bedtime story tonight?” Arcos asked.

She looked at him with play exasperation.  She couldn’t keep it up for long, though, she was in too good of a mood, despite the scares of the night.  She went to the bookcase, picked up a book, The Busy Bee: A Story of a Queen and her Workers, and began to read.  After a chapter, they four of them piled together on the mattress, each of them being careful of the other’s hurt body parts, and went to sleep.

Phoenix could smell coffee drifting from the warehouse above her, indicating that her brood was now awake.  They are going to run out of coffee altogether soon, she thought to herself.   We’ll all be drinking herbal tea.  She stood up, draping the blanket over her shoulder, and headed toward the rope that lead to the kitchen window.  As she climbed up, she consoled herself, Herbal tea is better than just plain water.

 

***

 

“So where are we going tonight?” Aries asked after his mother had left for clinic.  “What are we doing?”

“Looking for the Grey Cats,” Arcos said.

“How are we going to do that?” Aries said quietly.

Arcos looked at his sister, “We are going to do it like a mystery novel.”

“Why are you looking at me?” she asked.

“You’ve read a bunch of mystery novels,” he said.  “How do we start?”

Medusa thought back to the mystery style romance novels she’d read, and answered, “We start at the scene of the crime.”

“Scene of the crime?” Aries threw his hands up in the air.  “The whole city is the scene of the crime!”

“The scene of this crime was the cargo bay,” Arcos answered.

“We’ve already been to the cargo bay,” Aries argued.

Arcos jumped out of the garden window and onto the roof without answering.

Aries followed him, with Medusa at his heels.  Arcos was already two roofs ahead of them.  He stopped and waited for his siblings to catch up.  “We didn’t find anything the last time we were there.”

“We didn’t look very hard the last time we were there,” Arcos reminded him.

“Because aliens were chasing us last time,” Aries voice was sarcastic.

“Aliens aren’t chasing us this time,” Arcos said.

“Do you have a better idea, wool-for-brains?” Medusa quipped.

“Shut up, you,” he muttered.

“You shut up,” she retorted.

He shot her a nasty look.

Arcos stopped, and put his hand up.  Both Medusa and Aries followed suit, their argument forgotten.  The bear walked over to the far left of the roof they were on, and leaned over carefully.  Below, in the parking lot of the abandoned building were three scanning Kraang hoverers, rising into the street toward the roof of the building.

All three of them made a mad dash to the water tower, and pressed themselves against it.  Aries began to draw his axe, but Arcos shook his head and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.  They heard the scanner coming closer, and ducked to the other side of the water tank.  The scanner, obviously satisfied that no one was there, hovered off in the direction of what used to be the more populated part of the city.

“I could have taken that out,” Aries glared at his brother.  “Why’d you stop me?”

“We’re too close to home,” he said.

“We’re almost four miles from home,” Aries argued.  “The cargo bay is just a little ways away.”

“You think that four miles means anything to that thing?” Arcos furrowed his eyebrows.  “We don’t need it knowing we’re at the warehouse.”

Aries glared, but didn’t say anything.

“We shouldn’t have left the sewers,” Medusa said slowly.  “It is safer down there.”

“No, Mama is right,” Aries said hotly. “It is just as dangerous down there as it down here.”

Medusa looked at Arcos for support, “I think you’re right,” he said.  “But I’m not the one who decides where we live.”

Medusa sighed, and motioned with her head for them to keep moving.  “Come on,” she urged.  “There might be more of those scanners around, and we need to examine the crime scene before they find us.”

“And we need to stop arguing,” Arcos said following her.

Aries landed next to him, “Who’s arguing?”


	88. Chapter 88

Arriving at the crime scene, it was obvious it had been abandoned since the invasion.   The front of the cargo bay was still blackened from the fight that must have taken place here, though faded from a season of snow and rain.  The furniture and items that were strewn about the place were thick with dust and cobwebs.  The chair that Chategris had sat in during his convalescence  from the Battle of the Pretty Building had fully burned so that only the metal frame, with bits of foam and cloth sticking to it, was left   The funeral pyre that had been in the back of the room was a pile of ash.  Some of the carapace segments that were toward the edges had not fully burned, and were now only empty shells of insect parts.

“OK, then,” Aries crossed his arms in front of his chest.  “What do we do now, Sherlock?”

Arcos looked at his sister.

She sighed exasperatedly.  “We look for clues.”

“What clues are we looking for, detective?” Aries leaned forward toward his brother.

“Clues that tell us where the Grey Cats might have gone off to!” Arcos growled.  The bear was feeling jumpy, the Kraang they’d seen only a quarter of an hour before still heavy on his mind.  It was entirely too close to the Not Haunted Warehouse.  If the Kraang came scanning in their little patch of silence, would they be able to hear them soon enough to hide?  Would they be able to hide, period?  They all spend a fair amount of time outside, even he, simply because they could, after being cooped up in the sewer for an entire season.   His mother spent most of her day in the medicinal garden, weeding and tending.  Aries worked in the back of the warehouse space, either whittling pieces of wood into useable objects or fixing bits and pieces of car parts that had not been damaged in the destruction of their old home, despite the fact he had no car to put any of them into.  Medusa would lay curled up on the roof, or half draped out of a window, soaking in the spring sun with her inner eyelids closed.  Only three miles away from their home, there were Kraang scanning orbs!  And none of them seemed to be worried about it except him. 

Medusa slithered up to him and Aries and cuffed them both on the back of their heads.  “Why don’t we see if anything is missing?” she suggested.  “They left in a hurry, so depending on what’s gone, we might be able to tell if they’ve been back or not.”

“Who cares if they’ve been back or not?” Aries asked.  “That doesn’t tell us where they are!”

“It will tell us if they’re still alive,” Arcos said.  “Or at least, that they were alive long enough to come back and get stuff.”

Aries huffed slightly, and turned his head.  “Where do we go first, then?” he muttered.

“Why don’t we check out the rooms down here?”  Arcos looked about at each of the open doors on the bottom level, each that had been open since the invasion.

Medusa slid over to one of the rooms, and looked in.  “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to find anything here,” she said.  “They’re all like the main room.”  She looked back at her brothers.  “Why don’t we start with Myra’s bed?”

Arcos nodded, and headed up the stairs.  Medusa looked at Aries for a moment, who simply stood staring at her, before she followed her other brother.  Aries took up the rear.

The dorm in which Myra had her personal belongings was unended just as the cargo bay below was.  The beds were all askew and items were thrown all over the place.  Both Medusa and Arcos turned to their brother, who stood in the doorway, his mouth twisted in what looked like anger.  His eyes roamed over the beds and things that once belonged on them, under them, or near them.

“Which one was Myra’s,” Arcos asked.

Aries didn’t answer, his eyes still looking around him, his chest heaved in a deep breath.

“You do know which one was Myra’s, right?” Arcos asked, obviously annoyed. 

Arcos looked angrily at his brother, and then turned away from him.

“Which space was Myra’s, Aries?” Medusa slithered over to him, her voice coaxing.

“This one,” the ram walked over to a bed that had not yet been upturned and stood next to it.  Most of the beds in the dorm were makeshift things, cobbled together with found materials to fit the mutant that slept in it.  Many had made them into poster beds, with curtains to give the owner privacy.  Myra’s bed was no different, though the posters had been broken, and the curtains, which were actually old bed sheets, were laid across it.    Aries lifted one of the curtains, and then put it back down.  He shrugged his shoulders and gave a defeated sigh. 

He wasn’t sure what Myra even owned, besides the clothes she wore, and the knife she carried.  He could tell someone her body looked liked, in any area they asked.  He could tell someone certain parts of her body responded to his touch, or lack there of.  He could tell someone how her fur smelled, how her core smelled, how good she was at what she did to him when they were alone.  He could tell someone how quickly he could finish up business with her, because business wasn’t finished until the lady was done, in his opinion.  But he couldn’t tell someone what she owned, or what might be missing.

Being low on the Grey Cat totem pole, she owned precious little, he knew.  Nothing she had was any sentimental value to her, and he hadn’t given her anything that he would know to look for.  She had several times shown jealousy at someone else within the gang getting something that she had wanted, but was unable to attain because of her lack of status.  She had never asked him to get her anything, though, and he had never found anything on their supply runs that had caught his attention that she might want.

“I can’t tell if anything has been taken or not,” he muttered.  “I didn’t come up here very often.”

“Then where did you go?” Arcos asked, walking up to them.  “You were off with her all the time.”

“Someplace more private than this,” Aries glared.  “Just because people might know what I’m doing, doesn’t mean I want to give everyone a show!”

Medusa pushed her tail in the space between the two of them as a warning.

“She has curtains on her bed,” Arcos argued, taking a step back.

“How many times have you done it a bed, big boy?”  Aries’ voice was huffed and dangerous. 

Arcos’ angry face faded, as if he hadn’t considered the question.  “None,” he admitted, thinking. 

“Do I look like I fit in that bed?” Aries motioned to it.

“No,” he said quietly.

The three of them looked around, and finally Medusa said, “I can’t tell if anyone has been in here or not.”

“Me, either,” Arcos admitted.

“Let’s go up to the individual bedrooms and see what we can find,” she suggested, making her way to the stairs.  At the top, she made a straight line for one of the room in the middle of the hallway. 

“Why are we starting here?” Aries asked.

“This is Razz’s room,” she told him, opening the door.

The room looked like it hadn’t been touched.  The bed, obviously a custom made creation by the length and width of it, was made neatly with a bedcover pulled over and several pillows at the top.   The dresser and side tables were also in a neat array, with a thin layer of dust covering them, like a sheet.  Medusa sighed.

“Wow,” Arcos said, walking past his sister and entering the room.  “Razz has a nice room.”

“Both of you could fit on that bed,” Aries pointed.

“Yes,” Medusa’s voice lacked luster and she slithered in the room after her brothers. 

Arcos and Aries looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

She didn’t.  Instead, she went over to the dresser and examined it closely, as if looking for something on the smooth, empty top.  Then she opened one of the drawers.

“You know what’s in his drawers?” Aries asked incredulously.

“I know what is supposed to be in this one,” she said.

“What?” Arcos came over and peered into it.  It had an array of long sleeved shirts which the lizard customarily wore in colder weather.  “Shirts?”

“And a drawing,” Medusa closed the drawer.

“I don’t remember drawing something for Razz,” he bear said.

“You’re not the only one who can draw,” Medusa’s voice had an annoyed edge.  This entire venture was fruitless.  Arcos was just trying to be boss and give them something to do to feel useful, and all three of them knew in their hearts that this detective work was not going to bring up anything.  All it did was knock it further into her brain that the Grey Cats were gone, they weren’t going to find them, and that Razz was gone with them.

“The drawing isn’t there,” she said, turning toward the door.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Aries said, trying to sound bright and failing at it. 

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Surely, he wouldn’t have run up here, grabbed a picture, and then run out while aliens were trying to kill him and burn down his home?”

Medusa blinked her black eyes at him.  The drawing that he kept in his shirt drawer was gone, which made the Grey Cats all the more absent.  However, she hadn’t thought of it in the light that her least observant family member had shone on it.  “No,” she said, “he probably wouldn’t.” 

But if he didn’t, it meant he’d been back to get it.  She smiled, looking about the room, in its perfect, if dusty, order.  Of all the things he could have grabbed, he’d grabbed that picture.  It was a pencil drawing that one of the gang, someone whom Medusa had the slight suspicion wanted to impress both she and Razz with his artistic ability in comparison to her brother’s, had pulled for the third in command of the Grey Cats.  It was of her and Razz, on top of one of the buildings at the edge of the Grey Cat’s turf.  She lay draped over the framing of an old, unused water tank, and he leaned against it, his arms folded across his bare chest.  A moment that she did not know was spied upon at the time, but that could have been one of many, was rendered on the paper in such a way that it resembled a black and white photograph.

“But he couldn’t have come back for it recently,” she said.  “The dust isn’t disturbed.”

“Maybe we can check the other rooms?” Arcos asked.  “See if any of their dust has been disturbed?”

They went through each of the rooms, all of which seemed to be in the same condition that the owner left it when the Kraang had attacked, and each with the same thin layer of dust.  They finally reached the room at the end of the hallway, and looked at each other.

“This is Chategris’ room,” Medusa said quietly.

“I’ve always wondered what it looked like,” Aries took hold of the doorknob and opened the door.

Each of the three of them let out a soft gasp and walked in.   The suite of the Leader of the Grey Cats was more opulent than any of them had ever seen.  The furniture was lush and dark, in the bedroom, the poster bed was laid with deep cushions and a luxurious bedspread.  It, too, was in prefect order, like Razz’s with the thin layer of dust over everything.

“Chategris couldn’t have kept this up by himself,” Arcos said, opening one of the drawers to the dresser.  “He doesn’t seem like that kind of person.”

“I’m sure he had a maid,” Medusa said.

“Who?” Aries asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered.  “Maybe Sophila.”

“Who’s Sophila?” Arcos asked.

“Razz’s maid.”

 “Razz had a maid?” Aries asked incredulously.

“Yes, Sophila,” she repeated.

“I don’t remember Sophila,” Arcos said.

“You remember that ferret that Bunny got in a fight with last year?”  Medusa asked, fingering the bedspread.  “That’s Sophila.”

“You think Sophila is something other than just the maid?”  Aries chuckled.

“I would imagine so,” Medusa said matter-of-factly.  “That’s probably why Bunny doesn’t like her.”

“But Bunny has her own room up here,” Arcos said.  “Why be jealous of the maid?”

“The maid’s got what you want?” Aries suggested.

“This place is beautiful,” Medusa said.

“I wonder where he got all this stuff,” Aries looked around.  “We’ve never found anything like this in the dump.”

“He stole it,” Arcos said flatly.  “That’s why we don’t have stuff like this.”

“Maybe we ought to start stealing things,” Aries mused.

“Not stealing things is what makes us not Grey Cats,” Arcos told him.

“No,” Aries poked his head in the drawer that Arcos had opened.  “I think it is because Mama wouldn’t sleep with him.  Although, I think I’d reconsider if this is the kind of room I could have if I did.”

“Aries,” Medusa clicked her tongue.  “That’s gross.”

He ram waved his hands to indicate the decadent room.  “Doesn’t look gross to me.”

“He’s a mutant,” Arcos said, going toward the door to leave.  “She wouldn’t sleep with him just because of that.”

“I don’t know,” Aries followed him.

“She’s human, wool-for-brains,” Arcos said, heading back down the stairs. 

“So?” Aries asked.

“We couldn’t even go out in the daylight, before all this alien craziness happened, because of what the humans would think of us.  Mama never told any of her human patients about us until one of them saw us in the shadows.  Or have you forgotten that she always told us to stay in the shadows?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Aries argued weakly.

“Get it out of your head, Aries,” Arcos’ voice was surly, in the way it got when he was brooding over something.  “All of us are mutants, and she’s a human being.  What human is going to want to be with a freak like one of us?”

“The weapons room!” Medusa popped her head up above her brother’s, still nowhere near her full height.

“What?” they both asked.

“What does the weapons rom have to do with--?” Aries began.

“If the weapons are gone,” she darted down the stairs to the bottom floor of the cargo bay, “then they’ve been here!”

The three of them clamored down the stairs, and raced to the middle storage room in the bay.  The door had been blown open, just like all the others.  But unlike the others, it did not have furniture strewn about, broken, battered, and burned.  The room was completely empty.


	89. Chapter 89

The Children of the Phoenix sat on top of the cargo bay building in a circle, with the half moon shining down on them, and mentally regrouped.

“It’s so quiet,” Aries said.  “It was never this quiet.”

His siblings did not answer him, as if the lack of voice answered the statement itself.

“So what now, Sherlock?” Aries turned to Arcos.

The bear looked up at the half moon, and then back at Aires.  “We know there were no dead bodies, besides the hibernating insects when we came here in the winter,” he held up one of his clawed fingers.  A second finger went up in the air.  “We know that some of them, or at the very least, Razz, may have come back and gotten some things from his room.  That means that he was still alive at some point after the aliens took over.  And,” he held up a third finger, “…and…”

“We know Chategris has one bomb of a room,” Aires finished.  “In other words, nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Arcos said.  “We know that Razz was still alive after the invasion.  If he was still alive, and well enough to come back here to get a drawing,” he shot an offended glance at his sister, “then he was probably uninjured.”

“That still gets us nowhere,” Aries said.

“Then we go to the next logical location,” Medusa replied, her body in a twisted knot, her version of her brother’s cross-legged seating.

“Flatbush?” Aries asked.

“Flatbush,” Arcos said.  “Let’s go down on street level,” he suggested, “in stealth mode.”

“You’re so cheesy,” Medusa chuckled.

“Stealth mode?” Aries repeated.  “This isn’t a video game.”

“It would be one hell of a video game if it was,” Arcos replied.

As they wove in and out of alleys and around buildings, Aries said, “I don’t see why they’d be in Flatbush, the last time we were there it was crawling with Kraang.”

“So was the Haunted Warehouse,” Medusa said.

“Flatbush was crawling with people and Kraang.”

“That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have found some place safe there, mutants or humans.”

They got to edge of the Haitian District, the landscape changing around them as they approached.  Great crystal trees sprouted out sidewalks where green living things had once stood.  Kraangdroids marched in small detachments, the hum of their bodies and the rhythmic tramp of their footsteps got louder and then faded.   

The skirted several of them, and stopped in a particularly crowded area.  Several of the detachments seemed to have marched to this place, and four scanners were resting on spider-like legs on the ground.  Behind a gate that may have at one point been a private garden, several humans with great pink blobs where their heads should be, reached out of the bars, moaning in an unearthly way out of the several mouths that dotted the blobby heads.

“Why are they congregated here?” Aries whispered. “What do you think all of this is?”

“I don’t know,” Arcos replied.  “This doesn’t look good.”

Medusa hissed softly, and pointed down the road.  “It is going to be even worse for that poor fellow.”

Her brothers followed her finger to see a canine mutant, a common type of mutant in the city, was being dragged by two Kraangdroids toward one of the resting scanners.  He was resisting for all he was worth, but neither of the robot with squishy brains in their torsos seemed in the least bit phased by it.

“What are they going to do to him?” Aries whispered voice was harsh.

“Shhh,” Arcos commanded.

“We have to help him,” Medusa hissed.

Arcos held his hand up and shook his head.

They watched as he was dragged down the street, alternately growling and whimpering.  He was taken up to one of the scanning orbs, like an animal brought to sacrifice.  The orb raised itself slightly on its spidery legs, and an arm, with what looked like a needle at the end, protruded from it.   The Kraangdroids turned the mutant around, so his back was to the orb. 

“No!” he cried.  “Please!  Please!  No!”

The needle came slowly towards the dog’s head, the needle approaching the base of his skull.

“Please!” there was no sign of growling in the dog any longer, it was all whimper.  “Please, I’ll do anything!”

The Kraang around him did not seem to even notice that he was speaking, they just held him by the arms as he tried to thrash loose.  The mutated humans behind the gate moaned, as if singing along with the dog mutant’s pleas.  The needle moved closer, and then in a quick motion was thrust into the mutant’s neck.  He let out a howl, and then fell silent.

“We have to help him,” Medusa was no longer whispering, she had no need to.  As she said it, she darted out from their hiding place, bypassing Arcos’ body altogether and plunged toward the orb.

“Medusa!” he yelled.

Aries shrugged, and drew out his axe.  “Looks like Kraang for dinner tonight,” he said.  His axe immediately sliced one of the Kraangdroids in half, just above the torso.  The Kraang inside popped out and began to run toward the gate that held the mutated humans.  He then brought the flat of it out in front of him, deflecting several rounds of fire.  One of the lasers hit a Kraangdroid in the chest.  The body sparked, and then fell forward.  He could hear the squeaking of the Kraang inside, unable to extricate itself from the suit.

Arcos let out a roar of frustration, and began swinging his hammer.  “More like the Kraang are going to have us for dinner!”  A swing took the head off of one Kraangdroid, and the backswing took the shooting arm off of another.  He rolled to avoid fire, his back hitting a building.  Using his weight, he thrust himself forward toward one of the scanning orbs, which had now opened up to display an impressive array of weaponry.  He tackled it, and it began firing upward.  His heart jumped into his chest for a moment, thinking that surely one of the many lasers it was releasing had hit him, but he felt no pain.  Realizing that he must have landed in such a way as to not be hit, he bit down on the exposed, thin pieces of metal from inside the orb, and tore them out.  The sickening pink light faded, and the laser fire coming from it stopped.

Medusa darted toward the orb that had inserted the needle into the dog mutant.   It had also opened up and began firing, one of the lasers hitting a Kraangdroid off to the side.  She dodged each of the shots, feeling the slight change in temperature and movement of the air as each raced by her.  She took out her whip, getting close enough to the orb that she could reach it.  She lashed it out, and it wrapped around one of the many guns.  Curling her tail around the leather, she pulled, crashing the orb to the ground.  It stopped firing and lay still.

She wrapped herself around the dog-man, who had been standing stock still in the midst of the fire fight happening around him.  As soon as Medusa had lifted him off of the ground, he snarled and turned to her, snapping his teeth at her, but not being quite able to reach her.  She squeezed tighter, trying to take the air out of him to keep him still.

“Got him!” she cried, immediately making her way to the closest exit could think of, the side of a building to the roof.  One of the remaining two orbs immediately abandoned the fight on the ground and began to follow her, shooting with an accuracy that the Kraangdroids had never developed.

Aries and Arcos followed suit, both being two roofs behind their sister.  The last orb left levitated to follow them.

“We’re going to become Swiss cheese!” Arcos said.  “These things shoot everywhere—we can’t even close enough to disable them!”

Ducking behind a ledge for a moment of cover, before starting after Medusa again, Aries cried, “We need a gun!”

“We don’t have a gun!” his brother answered.  “The one with the bullets isn’t here, remember?!”

“I have an idea,” Aries rolled out of the way of a scatter of shots, and ducked behind a metal storage shed on the roof.

“I don’t!” Arcos dipped his head down, a laser just missing him.  “What is it?”

The ram came out from hiding, running at a squat toward his brother.  As he did so, he held his axe in front of him.  Using it as a mirror, he was able to deflect several beams that would have, indeed, made him Swiss cheese.  One of the beams hit the orb in a gun, causing a small, though insubstantial explosion at its side.  Its other guns however, did not stop firing because one of them was now destroyed. Aries made it over to his brother, held his axe up and smiled.  “A gun.”

Arcos held up his hammer and said, “Not a gun.”

“I got this,” the ram, popped up, deflecting another beam.  This one hit the orb flat in the middle, causing a series of explosions that were not-so-insignificant as the previous one.  The fell on the roof with a grinding noise.  “I inherited my mother’s aim,” Aries winked.

Arcos rolled his eyes, “Her aim in the dramatic, maybe.  Come on,” he turned to keep going.  “We need to get to Medusa.”

When they caught sight of their sister again, she was weaving in and out of laser fire, and neither could be sure if she’d been hit or not.  The dog mutant was still in her coils, thrashing his head from side to side in an attempt to get free.

“Double back, Medusa,” Arcos called.

His sister, without acknowledging that she heard him, changed direction and leapt to the building to her left.  The orb followed her, and as Medusa headed toward her brothers, its fire came at all three of them together.   Aries and Arcos sprawled in opposite directions, a black burned mark in the place where they’d just be standing.

“Do something!” Medusa said, weaving in and out of fire.

Aries used his axe as a mirror once again, missing the orb, but almost hitting his sister instead.

“Watch it!” she screeched.

Another deflection, and the orb was falling to the street level amidst several small explosions.

“Are you shot?” Aries asked.

She shook her head, “No,” she said.  “But I was bit.”  She motioned to a spot on her body near the dog mutant’s mouth that was bleeding slightly. 

“His teeth don’t look that sharp,” Arcos peered closely at the dog, backing his head up when the dog snapped at him.

“They’re not,” Medusa assured him, “he caught a little bit of my skin, like a pinch.”

“Let’s get down to street level,” he said.  “That way we can find some cover if they send any more of those things after us.”

Down at the road, Aries motioned to the dog in Medusa’s coils, “What do we do with him?”

“He has one of those devices in his neck,” his sister said, “like the military people.”  She dropped the dog onto the street on his stomach.  He tried to leap up, but Arcos put his foot on his back.  He tried to twist his way out from under the bear’s weight, but it was no contest.  Medusa bent down to the back of his neck, and pointed to the pink light shining there.  “See?”

“Well, take it out,” Arcos instructed.

“What if it kills him or something?” Aries said.

“What?” Arcos was incredulous.

“The guy we took it out of was already a gonner,” Aries explained.  “What if taking it out takes out a chuck of his brain or something?”

“Then he probably needs to be dead, if this is a mind control device,” Medusa told him.

“Great,” Arcos put more pressure on the dog’s back to hold him still.  “Not only do we have to worry about ninja mutants, now we have to worry about mutants that are being controlled by the Kraang.”

The three of them looked at the pink light in the back of the dog’s neck.  “Who’s going to take it out?”

“I’ll take it out!” Aries bend over and yanked.

The dog let out a howl, and then fell on the asphalt.  “Help,” he whined.  “Please help me.”

The fact that the ram had very large hands, with his three fingers quite wide at the ends, did not quell his attempt at yanking the device out of the dog man’s neck.  He couldn’t get a hold of it, so he bent down and grabbed it with his teeth.  The dog let out another howl.

Aries held up the device, “Ta da!”

Medusa sighed, Arcos rolled his eyes.

The dog sat up, blinking confusedly.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Aries held up his entire hand.

“All of them?”

Aries shook his head, a wide smile on his face, and looked up at his siblings.  “He can’t count guys.  I think we need to put him out of his misery.”

“What?!”  the dog exclaimed

“Yep,” said Aries, squishing the end of the Kraang device with this fingers, as if it were a fat tick.   “You wanna bash him, Arcos?” Aries asked with a wink.  “Or do you want me to slice him?”

“Medusa can eat him,” Arcos snarffled.

“No!” the dog got to his knees.  “Please don’t kill me!  Please!  Please!”

Aries grabbed him by the ruff of his neck and dragged him up.  “Shut up, dummy, no one is going to kill you.”

“We’re just going to ask you a few questions,” Arcos leaned against a darkened lightpost.  “Then you can be on your way.”

Medusa coiled on herself, and then uncoiled in a fluid, watery motion.  “You two are sick,” she hissed.

 

 

 

 

 


	90. Chapter 90

The dog mutant looked from Arcos to Aries as if they were both crazy, and he might have been better off where he was before Medusa had nabbed him.

“What were you doing here?” Medusa asked, “this place is crawling with Kraang.”

“I came to get some of my stuff,” the dog whined, “I know where my stuff is.”

“You’re stuff?” Arcos asked.  “The city has been occupied for months, why are you coming for your stuff now?”

“I need my stuff, man,” the dog said, gesticulating wildly, his dark brown eyes going wide.  “I know where it is, and I need it.”  The dog was shaking, and all three of the Children of the Phoenix recognized it was not from fear.   They had gone on every supply run with their mother until they were 13 years old, and knew the many kind of people who populated the streets at night at approached their mother for help.

“He’s a drug addict,” Aries waved his hand at the dog, and turned away.  “Dumbass.”

“I just need a little,” the dog said, “and then I’ll be fine.  I just came to get it.”

Medusa hissed disgustedly.  “You obviously aren’t staying here,” she said.  “Are you staying with other people?”  


“Other people, yeah,” said the dog.  “But other people want my stash.  I just need a little—“

“You’re not getting any,” Aries said harshly, his jovial mood completely gone.  “Have you seen a group of mutants lead by a grey and white cat?”

“What?”

Arcos put his paw on Aries shoulder.  “A group, called the Grey Cats, they’re lead by a cat, who is grey, hence their name.”

“Chategris?” the dog said.

“Yes!” all three of them came a step closer to him.

He cowered, and held up his hand in a defenseless gesture.  “Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

“Where?” Medusa darted into his face, and he flinched. 

“At Silver Lake!” he whined. 

“You came all the way up here from Staten Island,” Aries asked, “for your ‘stash’?”  The dog was about to answer, but the ram huffed.  “You’re pathetic.”

“How long ago was this?” Arcos asked.

“A month, maybe?”

The three siblings looked at each other in silence.  “Go to your other people,” Arcos said to the dog.  “You’re not going to make it out here alone.”

Aries shoved him gently.  “Go on, shoo.”

The dog mutant looked about him, and then dashed off into the street.

Medusa sighed again, “Maybe he would have been better off put out of his misery.”

“He’s not going to make it with people,” Aries grumbled. 

“He gave us a lead,” Arcos brought them back to their self-assigned mission.  “We need to get Silver Lake Park.”

“That’s going to take us days,” Aries said, “and we have to figure out how to get across the bridge without being seen, or fight our way across.”

“We won’t worry about that until we get there,” Arcos replied.  “One of us needs to go back home and tell Mama we’ll be gone for a few days.”

“I’ll go,” Aries huffed.

“You’re the slowest of the three of us,” Medusa said, slithering past him.  “I’ll go.”

“She’s the fastest,” Arcos said.

Aries threw his hands in the air, “Fine.”

“We’ll wait for you here,” Arcos said.  “Hurry back.”

In a heartbeat, she was gone.

Aries plopped himself down on the ground, cross legged, and pulled his axe from its loop.  Placing it in his lap, he muttered, “We’re going to lose this game we’re playing.”

Arcos sat down beside him, close, so their shoulders were touching.  The shadows from the overhang of the buildings concealed them from any scanners that might glide above them, and a stack of crates partially kept them from view of the street.  “You wanna stop playing?” he asked quietly, his deep, grizzly voice sounding like it was coming from underground.

“And do what?” Aries replied.  “Hide in holes underneath apartment buildings like those humans we found?  Hide in the sewer forever?”

“I think the sewer was a safer place than up here,” Arcos picked up a piece of gravel and began twirling it in his fingers.

“I hated the sewers,” Aries said.  “Everything stank.  All the time.”

“The Burrow didn’t stink, after we cleaned it good.”

“As soon as we left The Burrow it stank.”

“You did a lot of work on The Burrow,” Arcos noted.  “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have survived down there.”

“That doesn’t mean I liked it.”  There was a moment of quiet, before Aries added.  “It was never really safe in the first place, was it?”

Arcos took a long time in answering, remembering the awful waiting for something to happen while they were in The Burrow, and it taking so long to do so.  “That’s another thing that makes us different from the Grey Cats,” he echoed his mother’s words, spoken to them on several occasions.

“Maybe it’s better to be a Grey Cat, then,” Aries took out a whetstone from his pocket, and began to slide it across the blade of the axe. 

“You wouldn’t be able to be a Grey Cat,” Arcos chuckled.  “You’d have to do what Chategris said.  Even Myra wouldn’t be able to make up for that.”

“He wouldn’t ask us to do anything worse than Mama does,” he complained. 

“He wouldn’t let us play superhero,” Arcos pushed his brother with his shoulder.

“I never dreamt that playing superhero would turn into this,” Aries kept his eyes on the whetstone.

“Yeah,” Arcos looked up at the half moon, moving slowly through the sky.  “There’s a big difference between trying to save scientists from a business building and fighting an alien invasion.”

“This isn’t how I wanted to die, Arcos,” Aries said.

Arcos was quiet for a moment, disturbed that the least philosophical of his siblings was having so many similar thoughts to himself.   This wasn’t how Arcos wanted to die, either, being shot with a laser by an alien that didn’t even have arms. 

“Do you believe in God, Arcos?” Aires asked.

Arcos looked from the moon to his brother, whose eyes were still on his whetstone sharpening his axe.  “I think there must be something,” he said.  “I don’t think that there could be such order in the universe and there not be something out there.”  His voice was gentle.  “Do you?” 

“I don’t know,” Aries said.  “Myra does.”

“She was raised Catholic, right?”

Aries nodded.  “She said that she thought that the reason we were all freaks was because we were paying for our sins.”

“Do you think that?”

“I didn’t use to,” he replied.  “Nowadays, I’m not too sure.”

“We were babies when Mama found us.  How could we have done a sin so bad that we were turned into mutants?”

“That’s what I told Myra,” Aries said.  “Then she said, it said in the Bible that the sons will pay for the sins of the father.”

“I thought that God in the Bible was supposed to be all love,” Arcos said.

“Apparently He can be really mean, too.”

“That’s not what that televangelist on TV says,” Arcos argued. 

Aries cracked a smile.  “I’ve wondered sometimes,” his voice had a slight bleat of a lamb in it, and he cleared his throat, “if it doesn’t mean that the children pay for the sins of the mother, too.”

Arcos looked at the piece of gravel in his hand again.  “What kind of sin would Mama have done to make God turn babies into mutants?”

“I don’t know,” Aries said again.

“I think that it is just what happened,” Arcos scooted closer to his brother, so their sides were pressed together.  “We ended up being mutants.  We could have started out as animals, and not people.”

“So?” Aries asked.  “What difference does that make?  We’re still here, in the same situation, whether we started out as humans or animals.”

“But there is a chance,” Arcos said, “because we were mutated, that we had the chance to be people.  That’s a good thing, not a punishment.”

“What about those people who were humans and changed into mutants?”

“Maybe that’s the person they were meant to be in the first place, and there aren’t any sins involved.”

Aires finally looked up at his brother.  Their faces were close in the dark, close enough that Aries could see Arcos’ eyes clearly despite his lack of night vision.  “You sound like Mama,” he said.

Arcos smiled.  “Maybe she said that at some point.  She’d also say that if her sin made us mutants, she would be glad of it, because it gave her us.”

Aries huffed slightly.  “Yeah, she probably would.  I never thought to tell that to Myra.”

“You miss her?” Arcos asked.

“Sometimes,” Aries said.  “Sometimes I don’t.”  He shook his head, “Not like Medusa misses Razz.”  When Arcos did not answer his brother, Aries continued, “She’s the only one of us who has a chance for a halfway normal life.”

“Because of Razz?”

“If she decides not to be so particulier,” he said the last word with a condescending French accent.

Arcos chuckled again, “That was a good imitation, man.”

“She could be his woman, I think he’d be a one woman man,” Aries continued.  “They could live together, and do whatever it is they’d want to do together.  I bet Chategris would let them have a whole suite to set up like a house to get Medusa over there…or he would have at the cargo bay, if he’s still alive.”

“Maybe,” Arcos agreed. 

“What do the rest of us have?” Aries acted as if he hadn’t heard his brother, that he was just speaking his thoughts out loud.  “It’s not like there are tons of fish in the sea, and neither one of us has met anyone yet.  And Mama’s an old lady who’s decided to be a nun.”

“There are more fish in the sea than The Grey Cats,” Arcos argued.  “Just because **the one** hasn’t shown up, doesn’t mean she isn’t out there.  And I think if the right person came along, Mama wouldn’t be a nun any longer.”

“What human is going to come along?” Aries scoffed.  “You said earlier that no human is going to want a freak like us.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t going to be a nun for the rest of her life,” Arcos explained.  “I just said that **if** the right person came along, not when.”

“If she wasn’t too particulier to have a mutant, she could have Chategris.”

“You want her to have Chategris?”

“No,” Aries twisted his mouth disgustedly.  Then he laughed, “I wonder if that would mean we’d have to call him Dad.”

Arcos shook his head, but laughed quietly. 

“He could take care of her,” Aries said.  “And give her nice things.  I think he’d be a one woman man if he had The Phoenix.”

“Is that what you want your woman to think of you as?” Arcos prompted.  “Someone to give her nice things, and take care of her, and be a one woman man?”

“That should be good enough,” he said quietly.

“Is that what you’d want for Medusa?”

Aries breathed slowly.  His sister deserved respect, a respect that their mother got from almost every mutant they met.  Medusa deserved to be deeply respected by her mate, she deserved to be loved by her mate.  She was not an old lady who could settle or choose to be alone for the second half of her life.   Both his mother and sister, the two women he loved more than anything else than a woman outside of his family could give him, were women of…righteousness.  They did the right thing, and the feeling they gave off, even when angry, even when not being righteous, was not comparable to any Grey Cat female.  The thought had not occurred to him before, and not before being asked that question.

“No,” he answered.   “It isn’t.  She deserves more than that.”

“I think that is why Mama won’t be with Chategris, even if she would be with a mutant,” Arcos said.  “She deserves more than that, too.  They both do.  So do we.”

“You sound like you’ve thought about this a lot.”

“I have,” the bear said.   “I’m too particulier, remember?”

“Yeah,” Aries smiled wanly.  “I got a girl that can help you with that.”

“I don’t doubt you do.” 


	91. Chapter 91

The Phoenix climbed down the fire escape from the roof of the murder of crow’s nest, clunking quietly down the metal stairs.   She came here first, not because the unbidden thought had told her to, because it hadn’t, but because some little place inside of her wanted to be fawned over, have her hair pecked gently out of her hair sticks in strands, to be covered with hard, beaked kisses and feathery hugs.  It was selfish, she knew, but that selfish piece of her won out, with the caveat to herself that if the unbidden thought told her to go somewhere else she would.  It hadn’t, so she had.

The crows had built a lovely little nest in the top apartment of the building.  It was a one bedroom little thing, fully equipped.  They’d gotten the water working and the electricity working, but not the natural gas, and hence, no hot water. 

“We can’t have it all,” Phoenix said with a dramatic sigh.

The murder had laughed, a sound something between and ha-ha and a caw-caw.   

They’d set up the apartment rather nicely, with sets of crows claiming each room, and the living room and kitchenette being a communal space.  The mattresses had all been disposed of, being useless to the crow mutants, as they their bodies were constructed in such a way that they settled down like birds rather than like humans. In their places had been constructed beautiful replicas of actual crows’ nests.  The bedframes served as the branch that would have been used by the mutants’ smaller brethren, while larger branches of wood, coat hangers, and thick plastic wires wove the bottom of the structure together.  The inside of was filled with cloth, ripped and woven in, and then the layer of feathers that adorned the nest of every animal in class Aves.  Other than that, it was little different from a rather messy human apartment.

She played checkers with two of the crows, both of them beating her little time.  As they played, the crows chattered on about all the things they knew about the condition of the city. 

“No one comes in or out of the city.”

“The EPF dumps have plenty of supplies, and they aren’t too good about security.”

“The Kraang come to our dimension through all different doors, all over the city.”

“Those big pink triangles?” Phoenix asked.

“Yeah,” the crow answered.

“Are they permanent?”

“No, they move around,” he told her.  “They use these little devices to open and close them.”

Phoenix remembered the devices.

“Except for the one at the T.C.R.I building,” said another crow.  “That one’s permanent.”

“King me,” crowed her opponent.

So she kinged him.

 Phoenix felt like a real house guest, in a real house while she was there, kinging crows and listening to them complain to each other.  She felt bad for them, when the human owners returned, they’d be quickly evicted, if not killed.

That was, if the human owners returned.

It was with that thought that she left them, “I have to go and make sure no one needs any help.”

“They won’t be able to find you,” said a crow.  “Not with all the Kraang in the city.”

“They don’t need to find me,” Phoenix replied.  “I can find them.”

But she was quite sure that she wasn’t going to find them.  She hadn’t found any of them yet, her nights at clinic were the quietest she had ever had.   It was like walking in a haunted house, sometimes feeling that here were people all around her, waiting just around the corner, so that she was fully prepared for her, “Are you hurt?” routine.   But there was never anyone there, save the occasional Kraang lifeform.  The other times, it was truly an empty shell, with no living things about at all, but her.  It made her lonely, and made the visits she had with the others she’d found that more precious.

As she wandered the quiet streets, she tried to keep her mind empty, by listening to the place where the poetry came, to the place the unbidden thought talked to her.  She got no words from that secret, comforting place in her mind, so she simply followed where her feet took her.  She ended up near Concordia Cemetery, the large, brick church fully intact from the invasion.  It had started off as a small church from the 1800s, and had since been added upon, to give its architecture a more Shaker appearance than its original Colonial style.   She had never been in the church, but had seen on the news that it was beautiful in the front, where the original craftsmanship had been maintained.  She was here, why not see it?

She got no objections from herself, either her conscious mind or the unbidden thought.

She decided to wander the graveyard, she read the names and dates on the gravestones, ranging from as far back as the early 1800s all the way to the new millennium.  Many of them were pitted and blackened by the acid rain that fell on NYC, and some were as new looking as if they’d just been carved.  She found one that had.

She got to the heavy door of the church, and turned the old door handle, fully expecting it to be locked.  She was slightly surprised when it wasn’t.  However, she did need to push it hard, and it creaked loudly.  It was dark and shadowy inside the old sanctuary, where the door opened into.  There was no way that this could be where the worship service was held in modern times, there was no seating.  The sanctuary was open, surrounded by stained glass windows that let no light through at this time of night.  At the far end was a beautiful painting of Jesus, in his typical white and purple robes, looking off to the side, as if someone was going to approach him from the left.  She walked up to it, her head craning back as she approached, then she heard a click, that she instantly recognized came from a handgun.

“Don’t move,” said a male’s voice.  “Hands in the air.”

She did as she was told, raising her hands slowly.  She was surprised, in the back of her mind, that she wasn’t panicked.  Only a sense of caution came over, and self-deprecating, how you could you be careless, woman?

“Turn around, slowly.”  The man’s voice did not sound practiced, it was laced with fear.

She moved her body stiffly, as if none of her joints worked, keeping her hands up in the air.  She was faced with three human men across the room at the door, one of whom pointed a rifle at her.

“Check her neck,” the man with the gun said. 

One of the other two men came scuttling over to her quickly, ducking behind her to check her neck, exposed with her hair put up in her hair sticks.  She followed him with her eyes as far as she could without moving her head, until he disappeared from her view behind her.  “She’s clean,” he said.

“Who are you?” asked the man with the gun.

She moved her eyes back to him, “Show me your necks, and then I’ll tell you.”  She kept her voice calm, like when she spoke to her patients who were about to panic. 

The man looked her up and down, assessing her, and then nodded toward the man who was standing behind her.  They turned their backs to her, one at a time, lifting their shaggy hair, which had obviously grown uncut since the invasion, to reveal necks free of any pink lights.

“Who are you?” the man repeated, keeping the gun pointed at her.

She said the first thing that came to her mind, and was mildly surprised by it.  “I’m a healer, like a  doctor.”

“Don’t look like any doctor I’ve seen,” scoffed the man near her.

“You don’t look like any parishioners I’ve ever seen,” she quipped back.  Then after a moment she asked, “Are you hurt?”

The man next to the gunman, who had been silent up until this point, said, “What’s in the bags?”

“Medicines,” she replied.

He came over, and motioning to the man already there, he said to her, “Take them off.”

She lifted each of the leather bags, retrieved from the rubble of her Haunted Warehouse, over her head slowly, and placed them on the floor, and then put her hands back in the air.  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

The silent man gave a derisive chuckle, and began to take items out of the satchels.

She felt her ire rising.  She could take out the man rummaging through her things, and avoid the bullet that would be fired by the gunman in retaliation.  While the gunman reloaded, man number two could be disposed of, leaving her to shoot a bullet in the chest of the man holding the gun.   They thought that a single rifle and a bad attitude kept them safe.  No one has done anything to you yet, she reminded herself.  They’re being cautious.  They need to be cautious.

“They’re just oil and jars of lard and herbs,” said the man.  “And needles and thread and rags.” 

Phoenix wanted to scoff.  He’d been so lackadaisical in his search, he’d missed all of her small, improvised medical instruments.  “Are any of you hurt?” she asked again, a slight edge to her voice.

“I thought you said you were a doctor,” said the third man.  “What kind of medicine is this?”

“The kind they had before they had modern medicine,” she answered, annoyed.  “Are any of you hurt?” she punctuated each word.

The three men looked at each other, the gunman still pointing the rifle at her.  The second man nodded his head, and the gunman lowered his weapon.  “We do have people who could use some help.”  He walked past her, toward one of the doors that flanked the painting of Jesus.  “Come this way.”

She lowered her hands, and bent down to put her items back in her bags.  “Wait,” she said.

The man did, and in silence, she put her medicines back, and donned the two bags once more.  Following him through a dark hallway, he took her to the back of the church and into a room with no windows.

In it, the lights were on, and she quickly counted twelve people, in addition to three men who had accompanied her.  All of them started when she entered the room, looks of fear on their faces.

“It’s OK,” said the gunman.  “She says she’s a doctor.”

The looks of fear faded, and were replaced by a plethora of other ones.  Some were an uncertain wonder, as if they’d been told that a worm was their new housekeeper.  Others were of disgust, their eyes running up and down her frame with little subtlety. 

“Come here, Jake,” the gunman said to a boy of about 12.  “She can help you.”

Phoenix set down her bags again, and looked at the boy who approached her.  “What’s the matter?”

“He has a cough that won’t go away,” the gunman explained. 

The boy coughed as if to punctuate the man’s statement.  It was rough and barking.

“Lay down for me, please,” Phoenix said, but the boy didn’t move.  She lowered her head, and said with authority, “Lay down for me, please.”

“Don’t speak to my son that way,” a woman appeared at his side and put her arm about him.

“Mary,” the gunman said.  “She needs to do what she needs to do.”

“How do we know we can trust her?” Mary demanded.

“Because she’s clean.”  He glanced at Phoenix, and then said, “And look at her.”

The tone with which he said, “And look at her”, did not have a complimentary quality to it.  She prickled at it, and had to work to not make her mouth tighten into a straight line.  Many of the others were gathering behind Mary, and Phoenix’s prickle of indignation began to turn into a prickle of alarm.

“Lay down,” the gunman told the boy, “so she can help you.”

Phoenix knelt as the boy lay down, and she put her head to his chest.  “Breathe in for me,” she said as gently as she could get out.  The boy did and she heard the telltale rattling of bronchitis.  “You have a chest infection,” she told the young man.

“I know,” he said,  his voice a lilt of rude that Phoenix had only dealt with in the thugs that she occasionally met while roaming the streets before the invasion.

She ignored it and began rummaging through her bags, now out of organization.  She heard someone say, in a quiet voice, though not so quiet that it didn’t carry to her ears, “She looks like something out of a Mad Max movie.”

“Is that a slingshot she has on her belt?” asked someone else, with a slight chuckle.

She took out a baby food jar of a salve and addressed the boy.  “Put this on your chest five times a day, and it should be gone in two or three weeks.”

“Five times a day for two or three weeks?” the boy said.  “Seriously?”

Phoenix was struck speechless. 

Mary bent down, and put her arm about her son’s shoulders, and urged him up.  She walked away from her without taking the baby food jar.

Phoenix let out a slow, measured breath.  These people have been through a lot, she told herself, they’re going to on edge.

 It’s been more than a quarter of year, she shot back, these people need to get over it.

“Anyone else that needs help?” she asked to the group that was congregated near her.

Every single one of them stepped back.

She sighed, and rummaged through her bags again.  “This is a general antibiotic salve, you use it like Neosporin,” she placed it on the floor, near the chest balm.  “This makes a tea that will relieve inflammation, like aspirin.”  She placed a bag of feverfew next to it.

“You’re a doctor,” someone asked, “and this is medicine you give us?”

The alarm and indignation combined to form a chemical reaction that turned to anger.  She turned on the person who had spoken to her, “How many of you were there when you started out?”

The person was silent. 

“How many?” she demanded.

“About 30,” someone else said.

“And how many of those people died in the winter from disease?”  She knew her voice was harsh, she knew that these people had probably been through quite a lot, but their disregard galled her.  When no one answered, she went on, “And you refuse help when it happens upon you?  In a church, no less?”

“Who are you to tell us anything?” Mary stepped up, and the gunman put his arm on her shoulder.  “We have no home, we have to go through the garbage near the military installations to get food.  You’re not a doctor, you give us bacon grease in a baby food jar and call it medicine!”

“I never said I was a doctor,” Phoenix’s teeth were grinding together.  “In fact, I have had no medical training whatsoever.  But I’m closest thing to a doctor you’re going to get.”  She gestured to the jars on the floor.  “You don’t want to put the ‘bacon grease’ on your body, you go right ahead and die of an infection, or something worse.  You could all be mutated blobs, but you’re lucky enough to be here, still human.”

Another voice, one of the ones from the back scoffed, “What kind of human goes around at night, carrying jars of fat, dressed like a superhero from a comic book, with no weapons?”

Rage erupted in her chest, and must have shown on her face, because the gunman let go of Mary’s shoulder and pointed the gun at her.  On instinct, she dropped to the floor, leapt low at him, and popped up in front of him, using her arm to push the gun to the side.  The man blinked, his face becoming a mask of confusion, as she grabbed the butt and the muzzle of the gun in her hands, and using it like a bar, pressed him against a nearby wall.  She shoved the gun in his chest, and the man grunted in pain.

“You people have no idea what you have,” she seethed, pushing the gun to the man’s chest again.  He strained to lift it from him, like a standing bench press, but didn’t have the arm strength to do so.  “Save your bullets, because you’re going to need them for things that are lot less human than me.”

She let him go, and turned to see the group of people staring at her.  None of them had made a move to help the gunman, none had made a move to try and subdue her.  She looked them all at disgust, and bent down to retrieve her bags.

“Lady,” said the gunman in a strained voice.

“I’m not ‘lady,” she snapped, not deigning to look at him.  “I’m called The Phoenix.  Knowing the name might come in handy if any of choose to apologize because you need help again.”  She stopped at the door and turned to the group of humans, “Because you **will** need help again.”

She walked down the hallway, back to the sanctuary, and out to the graveyard.  Walking among the graves, back to the road, she thought no mutant would ever, had ever, treated her that way.  To them, she was the outsider, she was the one who wasn’t changed into a half animal, half human hybrid, she was the one who could walk in the sunshine if she wanted to, and not worry about being picked up by police, or shot on sight.  They all accepted her help gratefully, they sought her out for her help, even if it was just to talk to ease their loneliness-caused illnesses.  These people, these humans…

The thought struck her like Arcos’ hammer, right in the center of her chest, so that she had to stop in the graveyard and put her hand over her heart.

They were humans, and she didn’t belong with them.


	92. Chapter 92

She fought off the loneliness creeping into her heart.  The quiet of the city seeming even quieter after the yells of the humans in the church.  The feel of the messenger bags on her sides made her front and back feel that much more exposed.  The lack of the unbidden thought to give her direction made the constant emptiness in her solar plexus seem that much bigger.

As she wandered the empty streets, back home, her thoughts were allowed to wander, and in variably they wandered to Splinter.   Each time she had gone out in the weeks since his break, she had contemplated going to look for him.   But she if she found him, she had no idea what to do for him, or even if she would be able to do anything.  If she found him, he could easily tear her apart, and if he was in the same frame of mind as he was when he’d had his break, then he most certainly would.   Being around mutants for almost twenty years, she was under no illusion that if put in a fight against even a small one, she would be on the receiving end of a butt whooping.  Splinter was not a small mutant, by any standard, if she encountered him, she would end up dead if he attacked her.

The little hurt in her gut, the tightness in her shoulder, still loosening from her scarring, all gifts from a small beautiful interlude, niggled at her when she was lonely.  It made it very difficult to be grateful for what she had had, what she still had.  It made her want to rail against what she lacked.  It made her have to look clearly at the fact that she missed him, and that calm understanding he had was not going to replaced any time soon, if ever.

She brought her attention to her surroundings, it was not a good thing to be caught up in one’s mind while out and about, whether it be at night or not.  She noticed she was on 5th Avenue.  The stores were all filled, untouched, looking eerily ready to be opened when the morning came.  A few stores down, she saw the boutique that she had bought her dress, the one with the dark blue velvet, and the sparkles that looked like stars.  She shook her head in disbelief as she walked toward it, it was still there, after all this time.  Looking in the window, she saw it was the same shop, filled with beautiful clothes, shoes, handbags, and accessories, all geared to make a woman feel beautiful.  The window was displayed with the latest style of winter clothing, a sad, telling sign of the last time the doors were opened.

Her focus changed from the clothes inside the boutique, to her own reflection in the glass.  Her hair was twisted up in her hair sticks, beautiful pieces of art carved by her Aries.  If she turned her head slightly, she could see in the reflection the large spot near the nape of her neck where the hair was just growing back, half inch strands too short to even fall flat, but rather they stuck out straight.  The corset she wore, sewn lovingly out of the bits of leather, looked like a strip of something off of Frankenstein’s monster.  While the stitches were small and exact, the pieces of leather were all different shades of brown and black, and different sizes.  It did its job, she did not need a bar to keep her chest in place, but it boosted her small bosom up in bar maid fashion.  The white shirt she wore underneath it was now a stained with all manner of things, things that hadn’t come out with bleach.  Muted brown blood stains, her own and other’s blood, faded pink splotches of Kraang innards, dotted the tunic, sleeves, and upper chest.  Her boots, black and shiny, with a steel toe and thick sole, looked like they came out of a Party Express on Hallowe’en.   Instead of the giddy feeling that flushed her upon being given the gift of the corset by Aries, of looking like a “bad ass”, the words of the humans in the church came back to her,  “…a Mad Max movie…dressed like a superhero…”

She looked ridiculous.

Her focus went back to the clothes inside the boutique.  She knew the store had beautiful things in it, and she wanted them.  But she had no way of obtaining them.  She had no money, she had nothing that this world of humans would want.   She couldn’t just take what she wanted.  She had worked so hard to be **good** , to teach her children to be good.  Stealing was not what a good person did, it was done only in desperation.  She had clothes to wear, that were functional and made with love.  Taking pretty clothes was not desperation.   She had bought her sparkly gown from this shop, almost twenty years ago, on her credit card.  She remembered seeing it, wanting it, and being brazen enough to purchase it even though she couldn’t really afford it.

She heard several rats skitter near a garbage can, and when she looked at them, she caught sight of one, a large brown sewer rat.  Her thoughts ran to Splinter again, and what she could have taken from him, but she was good.  She could have taken whatever she wanted.  What did she want at the time?  A touch?  Information?  A connection?  Words spoken to her that meant…what?  She could have taken those things, she could have taken his life, and she hadn’t taken anything, because she was good.

She’d never **taken** anything.  She had fought for it.  She had earned it.  She had cultivated it.  She had created it.  But she had never taken.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror again, and the face that stared back at her looked at her in with bitter anger.

She walked over to the aluminum garbage can and picked up.  She carried it to the window, watching herself as she heaved it back above her head and let it fly at the glass.  The glass shattered, sending sparkly shards, like the sparkles on her dress, into the air about her, scattering the sidewalk with shiny, twinkling debris.  She stepped up and into the window she’d just shattered, grabbing the manikin as she did so.

She put it on the floor of the shop, and looked around.  The shop was untouched, with all of the expensive, fashionable clothes still on the hangers, the shoes still on their racks, the handbags still on their hooks, the jewelry still behind the counter, the little sundries and cosmetics still on the shelves.  She turned, appraising the entire boutique, before choosing a shirt to take off a rack.  Going to the mirror, she held it up against herself, and examined her appearance.  She skin seemed scuffy in the dim light, her hands blotched with dirt from her night out.  Putting the shirt down, she went to the back of the shop to find the break room.

The break room had a microwave, and the shop had a large, decorative bowl.   She took the bowl, filled glasses with water from the bathroom, microwaving each one separately and putting the boiling water in the bowl.  She found a little, hand crafted bar of soap, took it into the break room, and stripped down naked. 

She took the bowl of hot water, and tipped it over her head, letting the water run down her body slowly.  It was a touch too hot where the water hit, and made the places where it didn’t a touch too cold.  She broke out in goosebumps, but poured until her hair was saturated.  Unwrapping the little bar of soap, she began to scrub herself.  She scrubbed her hair.  She scrubbed her body.  She scrubbed her feet.  She scrubbed her back, missing a spot where she couldn’t reach due to the tightness of her injured shoulder.  After she was thoroughly scrubbed, she walked again to the bathroom with the glasses, wearing nothing a foam of goat milk soap, and heated the water to rinse herself off.

It took several risings for her hair, and the floor looked like one of the pipes had burst when she was done.  But she clean!  Just the washing had made her feel better, made her feel more like herself.

Searching in the shop, aware that she probably shouldn’t be walking nude in a store on 5th avenue, even if the world was empty, she found a wool sweater than the felt would make a good enough towel.  She dried herself of, and looked around the shop once more.

What was she going to wear?

She wasn’t going to wear that outlandish outfit again.

Start with the foundation, she told herself, making her way over to the lingerie section.  She found a white panty and bra set, silk with handmade lace.   A bra, a real bra.  One that would feel good on her skin, make her feel pretty when she looked down on it.  She put the set on, and then found a pair of jeans and a sweater.

At the mirror, she admired herself in her newfound underwear.  The admiration faded immediately.   Her body was stringy and thin.  She could see her ribs, and her collarbone, and her stomach concaved at her sternum.  She sported an impressive six pack, the muscles on her legs were defined and her shoulders distinct from her arms.  She looked like she did when she was a champion gymnast, only it didn’t look as good now as it did then.  She didn’t know why.   Her entire body was punctuated by scars.  The ones on her temples, round and white, went with the shed corset in the break room, borrowed from Mary Shelley.  She couldn’t shed them, though.   Was that the first thing that people saw when they looked at her?  It was always where her own eyes rested.   The matching round scars on her upper arms, on either side of the bottom of her sternum, just inside her hip bones, and at the top of her thighs.  In between each of these round, moon-like craters, were a plethora of other scars, scars from knives, guns, sharp objects, blunt objects, skin being torn falling off of buildings…  The newest was still pink and livid, three jagged lines from the top of one small breast all the way to the curve of her shoulder.

She had been lovely once. 

She put on the outfit she’d taken, and struck a pose in front of the mirror.  She looked better.  She looked a lot better.  She looked, almost normal.  A pair of soft soled black boots that came up only four inches above her ankle finished the outfit.

She gave a nod to reflection, and then turned to get her messenger bags.  They were worn and old, and it was time for a set new ones.  The handbag department produced two large hobo bags into which all her sundries were transferred.

“All done,” she said smugly, taking one last look in the mirror.

When she turned around, the items in the store seemed to confront her.  They were all still, like wind chimes waiting to be tinkled on a hot, still day.  Then the stillness broke.  She grabbed a large shopping bag, and began going through the racks, and taking anything that struck her fancy that was her size, and stuffing it in the shopping bag.  She took every bra and panty set that fit her, all of them silk or cotton, all of them adorned with various degrees of lace.  She took every style of jeans, most of them were tight, as was the fashion at the time.  But she found a few with a more flared leg, which was her preference.  She took stockings, socks, shirts, leggings.  The out-of-season section had tank tops, little baby-doll t-shirts, and shorts, all of which ended up in the bag.  She took every bar of soap, and to top it off, she took a set of stud earrings, set with gems, none of which she thought were real, in the shape of little poppies.  She put them in her ears immediately, and didn’t even go to the mirror to see how they looked.

Laden with her medicine bags, and a the handled shopping bags of the boutique, she went home, her soft soled boots making no sound at all as she walked.

 


	93. Chapter 93

Medusa returned just as the sky was beginning to lighten.  “Mama wasn’t at home,” she explained.  “I had to leave a note.”

“Did you have any trouble?” Aries asked.

She shook her head and winked.  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“We need somewhere to bed down for the day,” Arcos said, standing up and stretching. 

“I don’t think it’s any more dangerous to be out during the day than it is at night,” Medusa argued.

It was Arcos’ turn to shake his head.  “We don’t need to be out and about sleepy from being up all night.”

“We can sleep part of the day, and then started a little later,” Aries suggested.

Arcos shook his head again, “It is easier to stay hidden at night.”

“We can’t stay hidden from those scanners unless we are behind something,” Aries said.

“But we can hide from the robots in the dark,” Arcos said.  “We sleep today, we go back out tonight.”

So they did, in the basement of a building, with each taking turns as lookout until the sun went down again.

“I’m starving, man,” Aries said upon poking his head out of the building door to see if the coast was clear.

“We’ll eat when we get to the bridge,” Arcos said.

“That’s going to take all night,” Aries argued, “we haven’t eaten all day.”

“What do you see to eat around here?” Arcos whispered harshly.  “Everything has been picked over!”

Medusa pointed up toward one of the high rise buildings, “Pigeon.”

“You want us to eat raw pigeon?” Arcos asked.

“You can eat however you want,” she replied, sliding in the direction of her prey.  “I’m going to have dinner.”

Scaling the building was always easy for Medusa, she was able to slither up the wall using concertina motion, moving parts of her body separately to keep against the wall.  The boys, on the other hand, had to find another way up.  Using outcroppings, fire escapes, and window ledges, all three of them managed to make it to the pigeon line.  By the time the boys arrived, Medusa was popping her fourth pigeon into her unhinged mouth.

“That’s gross, Medusa.”

“Not it isn’t,” she replied, “it’s delicious.”

Arcos looked at Aries, “What are we going to do?”

“Collect eggs?” Aries suggested.

“I’m not eating raw eggs,” the bear said.

“I am,” Medusa plucked one from a nest, as all of the pigeons had fled upon the boa constrictor’s arrival. 

“We can cook them,” Aries said, reaching for a nest.

“How?” Arcos asked incredulously.

“With a fire, honey-for-brains.”

“How are we going to make a fire?” Arcos wave his paw in Aries’ face.

Medusa grabbed a nest, and emptied it of eggs one by one.

Aries looked at Arcos as if he were stupid.  He took a flashlight out of pocket and turned it on.

“How are you going to make a fire out of a flashlight?” Arcos scoffed. 

Aries took the lens off of the top of the flashlight, and put the rest of the flashlight under the nest he was holding.

“You going to light it on fire with a lightbulb?”  Arcos was not impressed.

Aries kept the flashlight there, and said, “Why don’t you gather some eggs for us to eat, and nests for us to burn.”  Just as he was done talking, the nest burst into flame.  He put it down on the ledge quickly, and smiled smugly at his brother.

“How did you do that?” Arcos asked, grabbing another nest.

“It is an old flashlight,” Aries explained.  “It’ll give you a nasty burn if you touch it.”

The boys sat down, catching nests on fire as ones burned out, and eating the eggs as they cooled, like a little production line.    Peeling the hard cooked eggs with their large fingers proved to be a challenge.  They were losing more egg than they were eating.

“You know,” Aries said, popping an entire egg in his mouth, shell and all, “it might be easier to not peel it.”  He chewed it, looking into the air in an appraising fashion.  “Crunch,” he said, “a little sooty.”  He smacked his lips, “But good enough to not peel.”

Arcos followed his brother’s lead, and made a face.  “I don’t like the crunch,” he said.  “But it tastes OK.”

They ate their fill, and then headed toward the bridge to Staten Island. 

The closer they came to it, the more they had to avoid Kraang of all different varieties.  When they could finally see the stretch of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, they stopped.  They were quiet for a long time, before Aries asked, “How are we going to get across that?”

“I have no idea…” Arcos’ voice sounded defeated.

“The Kraang are all looking toward the water,” Medusa noted.  “They must not be expecting to get from island to island.”

“They’re expecting retaliation from the sea,” Arcos answered.  “But as soon as we try to cross, they’re going to see us.”

“We could climb,” Medusa pointed to the cables, “and go above them.”

“If we get caught, we’re Swiss cheese,” Arcos shook his head.  “How did the Grey Cats get across?”

“They didn’t,” said Aries.  “There is no subway or sewer lines going to the Island, the Narrows are two and half miles wide, they didn’t swim, and they obviously didn’t cross the bridge.”

“We could go under the bridge,” Medusa said.

“What?” Aries said.

“Let her talk,” Arcos waved his hand.

“We could crawl on the undercarriage of the bridge,” Medusa’s voice was excited.

“How are we going to crawl two and half miles under a bridge?” asked Aries.

“There isn’t any way the Grey Cats would have been able to do that,” Arcos said. 

“Swim?” Medusa hissed.

“The Grey Cats didn’t come this way,” Aries said a little too loudly for his siblings.  “There is no way they got across.”

Arcos stared across the water, “We can go by boat.”

“What?” Aries’s voice went up an octave.

“Shut up, wool-for-brains!” Medusa smacked him.

Aries raised his hand to smack her back, but Arcos grabbed it.  “Stop it,” he whispered.  “If we can get something that floats, and we get far enough away from the bridge, we can use our hands to row ourselves across.

“We’re not finding a boat here,” Aries said. “We need to get farther down the beach.”

Getting to a darkened portion of the beach was not difficult, and the amount of refuse they found there was surprising.  Lots of it was boat and boat parts.  Chunks of fiberglass hulls, sheets of wood, and other debris could easily be used as floating devices.

“I think any number of people could have crossed the Narrows this way,” Medusa said. 

It was easy for them to do it, also.  The boys fit themselves into a boat, after they tore the motor of off the back to ease the weight.  Medusa, who couldn’t fit in the boat with the boys in it, decided to swim next to it.  She had no issues crossing the straight, and both of the boys gave her rather jealous looks when they reached the shore.

“To Silver Lake?” asked Aries.

“To Silver Lake,” said Arcos.

Their travel to the park was not eventful at all, in fact, the interior of Staten Island had very little Kraang activity at all. 

“This would be a pretty safe place for a mutant to bed down,” Medusa noted.

“If they could get here,” Aries muttered.

“We got here,” Arcos said, as the approached the park. 

“What now?” his brother asked.

“We start looking,” he said.

The three of them stayed together for a while, Arcos sniffed the air.  “It smells like…”

“…something dead,” Medusa finished for him.

As the continued on through the park, the putrid smell of decay got stronger and stronger.  “It leads in to the woods.”

“Maybe it’s just a deer or something,” Aires said hopefully.  “I can’t smell it yet.”

The three of them wove their way through the trees, the night around them getting darker and darker with each step.  The branches reached out for them with sharp, sticked fingers, and the tops of three swayed menacingly.    “This is creepy,” Arcos said.

“I can smell it now,” Aries said, wrinkling his nose.

They stopped, each sniffing to see if they could detect where it was coming from.  Arcos pointed deeper in the woods, “That way.”

“Please be a deer,” Aries muttered.

The trees slowly thinned, the branches not grabbing them quite as much, until they came to a clearing in the woods.  It had clearly been used as a living space, with tarps and tents put up, several stones which had held campfires, and refuse from normal living.  There was also three rotting bodies in the middle of it, each in a position that looked as if they’d died fighting.  

The three of them walked in, and each went to a body. 

“This is Thorrstien,” Arcos said.

“And this is Trisha,” Aries’ voice had a sad tinge to it.

“I can’t tell who this is,” Medusa said quietly.  “He’s been cut up so badly.”

The boys came over to her, looking down at the unidentified body.  Indeed, it had been cut up into almost pieces, none of his parts quite coming off of his body.  

“At least now we know the Gray Cats made it over the bridge,” Aries said somberly.

“Something attacked them, and they fled,” Medusa said.

“It was a while ago, by the smell of things,” Arcos sniffed the air again.  “I smell crab.”

“Maybe they ate crab as their last dinner?” Aries suggested.

“No, I smell it too…” Medusa said, looking around the clearing.

“Trichichaachii!!!!” A shrill voice burst through the trees, quickly followed by the owner.

“That’s not a crab,” said Aries. 

And it wasn’t a crab. 

It was a shrimp-in-a-helmet.

It let out its cry again, and launched itself at Aries.  “Oh no, I’m ready for you this time, you little shrimp.”  He took his axe out, and as it flew through the air toward him, he cleaved it in two.

A garbled sound came from the woods, and two mutants, that looked rather similar to the shrimp-in-helmets in that they also were wearing helmets, except that they had an extra pair of arms that were did not appear to have hands, and the arms that were attached to the shoulders ended in giant pinceres.  They towered over The Children of the Phoenix.

“That’s a crab,” Aries said.

The two giant crabs-in-helmets lunged out of the trees, both falling toward to Aries.   He put his axe to block a blow, and was thrown across the clearing.  Medusa and Arcos came at them, just as three more of the shrimp-in-helmets jumped out of the woods and converged on Aries.

Arcos swung his hammer, landing it square on the carapace on the back of one of the mutants.  A loud crack resounded through the clearing as the carapace.  It turned around and snapped at him with one its pincers, catching the hammer head in with a ‘chink’.  Swinging its arm, it released the hammer, sending Arcos flying into a tent.  The rods holding it up went ‘thwang!’ as he flattened it.

Medusa cracked her whip at the other crab-in-a-helmet, aiming for its claw.  It snapped at the thong, and Medusa was only able to pull it out of the way enough so that the tip was cut off.  She looked at it, her black eyes going wide, and slithered to the side as it made a lunge at her.

Aries let out a high pitched yell, the three shrimp-in-helmets jumping on him.  One landed a kick smack in the middle of his chest as he lay there, banging his flat of his axe into him.  The other two began chopping at him with little hands that did not seem they could be as powerful as they felt to the ram.  He managed to struggle into a sitting position, but couldn’t get a firm grasp of his axe handle from the multitude of little arms and flapping antennae.  He managed to push one off, and roll to his side, trapping it beneath his shoulder.  He was kicked off of it, the hit striking his shoulder, by another mutant.  He rolled, and heard a cracking squish underneath him as he rolled over on of the shrimp-in-helmets.   What a way to go, he thought in the back of his mind, squished by a rolling ram.  When he struggled up to his feet, he saw what had kicked him—a lobster-in-a-helmet.  “Really?” he asked no one in particular.

Arcos rolled onto his back, his hammer still in his hands.  The crab-in-a-helmet charged at him, landing on top of the bear.  He put his hammer up to try and block a blow, but the crab-in-a-helmet was faster than he anticipated, and it knocked it out of his hands.  Arcos managed to grab each of its wrists, or more accurately, its elbows as it didn’t seem to have any wrists, to keep the snapping pincers from his face.  He pulled his arms to the sides, the crab-in-a-helmet’s arms being forced to follow suit, so that its chest fell forward.  Once he was close enough, Arcos sank his teeth in to the mutant’s shoulder, the taste of seafood seeping into his mouth once he punctured the chitin.

Medusa managed to strafe out of the way of the crab-in-a-helmet, it clamped at her as she did so.  She struck her whip out again and missed.  “These are fasts crabs!”

“Fast crabs?!”  Aries shouted back.  “Have you seen these shrimp things?”

She darted in, and coiled around the crab-in-a-helmet, but she was only able to pin one of its arms to its side.  The other one was free, and the mutant snapped at her head.  She moved her head to the side, as if to strike, and the pincer missed her by a hair’s breadth.  She reached up to try to deflect its pincer with her hands, but her arms were nowhere anywhere near strong enough to do anything other than follow the arm wherever the crab-in-a-helmet waved it.

It seemed to figure out that it wasn’t going to be able to catch her with the pincers, so it began to bludgeon her body with the outside of the larger pincer.  She began to strike at the pincer itself, but it moved faster than she did while she was holding.  It chomped at her head again a few times, before Medusa reared up and hissed.

She began to close her coils on it.  It bludgeoned at her, in the same spot, and tears came to her eyes as the pain in that one area worsened with each blow.  Finally she heard the cracking of its carapace.  As it slowly collapsed in on itself, it began to hit her faster and faster, until with a great crunching sound, and a squirting of blue liquid, it stopped and went limp.

Aries braced himself holding the flat of his axe in front of him, as the lobster-in-a-helmet launched a kick at him.  The kick hit the axe, and Aries was able to use it a bat to deflect the mutant, and sent it sprawling to the side.  The shrimp-in-helmets were already on him, chopping at him with their hands and antennae.  With the lobster-in-a-helmet momentarily disposed of, he used the butt of his axe to bonk one that was attached to his leg on the head.  It fell off of him, and he swung the axe at it, slicing it partially, enough to leave it quivering on the ground.

The lobster-in-a-helmet had recovered, and the other shrimp-in-a-helmet had now climbed to Aries’ shoulder.  Its antennae waved erratically, whipping him in the cheek.    He had to close his eyes to keep from getting one poked out, just as the lobster-in-a-helmet landed a kick in the chest, this time with no axe to block its way.  He lost his footing completely and fell backwards, landing on the flat of his back.  The air was knocked out him, but the shrimp-in-a-helmet was also knocked off of him, so he was able to open his eyes again.  He did so just to see the lobster-in-a-helmet about to land on top of him.  He rolled to the side, but not in time, it landed on his shoulder.  He cried out, and continued his roll, which caused the mutant lobster-in-a-helmet to fall off of him.  He heaved up onto all fours, and grunted loudly as pain shot through his shoulder up to his ear and down to his shoulder blades. 

The mutant whipped a pincer at Aries, and the ram was able to make a little leap, curling up his back as he did so to look very like a lamb, and landing on the lobster-in-a-helmet.  His weight caused a crunch as he landed, and rammed his head down into the helmeted head, flattening it.

Arcos growled in an attempt to get one of his sibling’s attention, but both were currently occupied with their own opponents.  He bit down harder on the crab-in-a-helmet’s shoulder, and the mutant let out a garbled yell.   Arcos felt the carapace give way under his jaws, and his back teeth were able to get a grip on it.  With a yank, he tore a chunk of its shoulder off.

The mutant made a screaming sound, and flailed off of Arcos.  It brought one of its pincers to its shoulder which now sporting a large hole in it and spurting blue hemolymph.   Arcos reached for his hammer, and pouncing up, swung it, sheering its head off.  The head, helmet and all, bounced a few times before coming to a stop against a tent.

Aries was on the other side of the clearing from him, stumbling and holding his shoulder.  Medusa was still squeezing the other crab-in-a-helmet, thick, blue liquid seeping out from in between her coils.  Arcos went over to his brother, and helped to support him.  “You OK?”

“No,” Aries said, touching his face.  “Those little shrimp things hurt.”

Medusa released the mutant in her clutches, and let it fall to the ground.  Breathing heavily, she slithered over to the boys.  “I think that thing broke some of my ribs…” she whined.

“Come on,” Arcos lead Aries to center of the clearing, “we need to rest.”

“I don’t want to rest here,” Aries said, pointing to the woods.  “Let’s rest somewhere else.”

Arcos nodded, and lead them into the woods, where they found a spot far enough away from the clearing that the smell of seafood no longer permeated the air.  “We’ll bed down here for the day,” he said.  “It will be dawn soon anyway.”

Aries collapsed on the ground, still clutching his shoulder, and Medusa curled up in a tight coil, and put her face in the middle, hiding it from view.  Neither one said anything.

“Guess I’ve got first watch,” Arcos muttered.

 


	94. Chapter 94

The Phoenix came home to an empty house and a note on the kitchen table. It read:

"Dear Mama,

We've gotten a lead on where the Gray Cats might be hiding out. We'll be gone for several days. Don't worry about us. You stay safe.

Love,

Medusa, Aries, and Arcos"

She recognized Medusa's scribbly handwriting, she'd signed her brothers' names. She sighed and put the note back on the table amidst all of the shopping bags. She hadn't wanted to come home to an empty house. She'd wanted to come home to hugs and kisses and "How was your night?"s. She looked around the empty warehouse floor, home, but not quite right, like home in a dream. She thought she'd be able to recreate the warehouse next door, but the lack of certain items, the mirror image of the place gave it an off feel that still hadn't subsided.

She went down to the garden, to watch the sun rise, but as soon as the sky was light, she became restless. It was too quiet, the smell of coffee that she didn't drink did not drift down to her. Plants that were formerly slow growing were already having their spring burst with the light being let in from the warehouse that no longer existed, and plants that thrived in the shade were already drooping, and she knew they wouldn't make it through the summer if she didn't move them.

With a huff, she got up, and went to the nearby storm drain. Opening it up, and dropped inside, and began to make her way to the inlet. She wasn't going for a medical visit, she told herself, she was going for a social one. She'd talk to the frilled lizard man, she would find out what he knew, and then she would know. Knowing would help her to feel better. At the very least, being around people would make her feel better.

She wondered if she'd see Splinter while walking down in the sewer, but she didn't. She didn't even see any signs of him. Or anything else. There was only the dripping of the water, the echo of her footsteps, and the occasional crank of her crank-lantern. With each step, she got more and more tired, until one of the Inleters popped up in front of her, seemingly out of nowhere, and she gasped, and nearly dropped the light.

The mutant smiled. "Walk you in, Phoenix?" he asked.

She smiled forgivingly, and nodded. "Sure."

A buzz began when she entered the room, and her spirits rose immediately. Sparks and Russe came up to her, all smiles.

"I thought you weren't coming back," Sparks said, happily surprised.

"I said I wasn't coming back for a medical visit," she corrected. "I have come for a social visit." She yawned, putting her hand to her mouth. "But first, I have to go to sleep. I've been up all night."

Russe waved her over to an empty space in the corner of the big room. "I like your clothes," she said very quietly.

"Thank you," she replied, sinking down to the pile of cloth on the floor. "I went shopping…."

Russe chuckled as the Phoenix's words drifted off and she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she felt fuzzy headed and fuzzy mouthed. She hadn't dreamt of anything, it was a blissful, nothing sleep, in which she didn't remember falling into slumber, and woke up still wanting to be there. She yawned again, covering her mouth, and stretched, blinking rapidly to clear her head.

No one seemed to notice she was awake, and she felt a tinge of resentment at it. The Gray Cats would have known immediately, and she'd be presented with a hot tea, probably with sugar and cream right about now. She missed someone doing for her, it was months since she had done for. She seemed to be the one doing all of the….doing.

She stood up, and looked around the room, and saw the frilled lizard sitting against one of the far walls, sipping something from a mug with a broken handle. She walked over to him, and as she did so, the room started to buzz again, and she had to work hard to hide a smile of satisfaction.

She sank down across from the lizard, who simply regarded her. "Got a minute?" she asked.

"I got lots of minutes," he said.

She chuckled. Now that she was here, she wasn't sure what to ask him. "Following doctor's orders, I see," she indicated the mug of brick red water.

He raised it to her in a cheers. "Ardillo takes his job very seriously."

"Good," she said. "It is a serious job."

"So what brings you here, my sister-in-captivity?"

She smiled at the epithet. "I don't even know your name," she suddenly realized.

"Balboa," he said without missing a beat.

"Balboa," she repeated. "That is an interesting name."

"It was given to me as a joke," he took another sip of his rusty water, "because I didn't look like a Fred."

"Fred?" she asked incredulously. She immediately blushed at her rudeness.

"Yes," he told her, chuckling. "Fred. I was more like Rocky Balboa…and it stuck."

"Balboa it is then," Phoenix said.

"So what brings you here, Phoenix?" he asked again.

She took a deep breath. She knew if she asked him, she'd be opening a door that her mind had purposely kept locked. She had enough psychological knowledge to know that it kept it locked for a reason. But she needed to know what happened to her in that time between the train ride and the escape. No, you don't need to know, she told herself, you want to know. She wanted to know why her body was scarred, why she was kidnapped, why she ended up with this life, that she loved and that was so lonely. An errant picture, of her being here sewing and patching, with Splinter by her side, flashed in her head. Damn him, she spat to herself. Damn him for making her realize how lonely she was!

_ Don't _ , said the unbidden thought.

She tried to shove the loneliness aside.

"You said you remembered what happened to me," she managed to get out, calmly to her surprise.

Balboa regarded her for a moment before answering. She blushed again, thinking he could tell the thoughts that argued in her head, that they must have shown on her face. "I do, some of it," he answered.

She waited a moment, and when he said nothing else, she told him, "All I remember is being taken, and then you setting us free."

"I wasn't trying to set you free," he said matter-of-factly. "I was trying to set myself free."

She wasn't expecting that for an answer. She blinked, trying to find a train of thought to counter the statement.

_ Don't _ , the unbidden thought told her again.

"Can you tell me what happened to me?" she asked, her voice not as kind as it had been before.

Balboa raised one of his eyebrows. "You've gotten big for your britches over the past twenty years, haven't you?"

Phoenix's face contorted to one of anger, "I saved your life!" The buzz around them stopped, and others began to look at the pair surreptitiously.

"And I set you free," he said easily, taking another sip. "That makes us even."

This was not the same attitude that the man had had when she'd patched him up. He had been grateful, he had been pleased to see her, he had been complimentary! Now he was…being a jack ass. She need jack assery right now. She needed, she wanted, answers. She wanted to feel something other than…otherness.

"You are my brother-in-captivity," she said, taking a deep breath trying to calm down. "It has been a long time since I have had a brother, and I do not want to fight with him."

He laughed outright, throwing his head back, and having to adjust his hand to not spill his rusty water. "Oh," he said, bringing his head back to look at her, "I see how you have survived these last two decades, little sister. I will admit, I have been wondering that."

She had to work hard to school her features not to be mad. She wanted to reach out and slap the fellow across the face.

A mutant came up to her, and tapped her shoulder gently. "Would you like a glass of water?"

A glass of water, the thought was derisive. Oh, stop it, she chided herself, you who have gotten too big for your britches. "Yes, thank you," she accepted it and took a long draught. It was cold, and tasted good, thanks to **her** son's water filter. She turned back to Balboa. "Could you please tell me what you know?" she asked, in what she hoped was a conciliatory tone.

He was quiet a moment, regarding her again. "Alright, little sister," he said, leaning back against the wall. "You don't remember anything?" His entire attitude changed with the question. His body language, his tone of voice, they were back to what was a closer match to the mutant she had met on the operating table.

She shook her head.

"I remember that they had several human females there," he said. "Some of them were pregnant. I don't know what they did with them. They were there one day, and then one day they weren't."

Phoenix cringed.

"Some of them they turned into mutants, like us. They were in the cells with us."

She didn't recall any of the mutants being female. She had just assumed they were all 'he'. That's rather sexist, she noted. Why wouldn't some of them be female?

"I don't know why they didn't turn you into a mutant," he said. "I don't remember you being pregnant."

A flutter of anxiousness swept her heart at the words. "I don't think I was," she said quietly.

"I remember them hooking you up to a machine, I think to measure your brain waves," he reached out and poked one of the scars on her temples. "I remember them putting a lot of needles in your abdomen. And I remember them cutting you open," he said slowly, watching her closely, "and monitoring how you healed."

Cutting her open and monitoring how she healed? Why in the world would they do that? She didn't have this ability to heal until after Ailurosa died, until after the little man in the funny hat had spoken to her, until the great firebird had burned away the hurt, and left her raw and new.

"Why would they do that?" she asked, bringing her knees up to her chest, and wrapping her arms about her legs.

"I don't know," Balboa replied. "I just remember you survived things you shouldn't have. Things no one should have."

"Like what things?" she asked, before she even knew she was asking the question.

He shook his head slowly, his frill shaking very slightly as he did. "Bad things."

"Like what kind of bad things?" she insisted.

"Like the kind of bad things you don't need to know about if you don't already remember them," he said blinked and continued before she could reply, "I don't know what they really wanted with you. You were the last human female left, after what they did to all the others. I doubt they would have had you around for much longer…"

Her face twisted into one of consternation, and she looked away from him. She swallowed hard. "I don't remember any of those things," her voice was thin to her own ears.

"Why would you want to, little sister?" he asked.

She felt her heart beating in her ears. "Because, it's mine," she answered. "It's my body, and it's my time, and I should know." She looked at him again, "I should remember."

"Now you do know," he said simply, "whether you remember or not."

Now she did know, whether she remembered or not.

 


	95. Chapter 95

Phoenix came home to still empty house, with shopping bags on the table, and a note still on the kitchen counter.  The kids weren’t home yet, and she’d be alone for who knew how long.  She sighed and put the tea kettle on, recalling her visit to the Inleters.

 

Balboa had looked at her for a long time after he'd told her about their stay with the Kraang, and she had simply looked back at him, her knees to her chest, and a look of consternation on her face. She felt small, and helpless, the answers that she was hoping for not being forthcoming. Finally, it was as if Balboa had taken pity on her, reached out a life preserver to her, by asking, "So, tell me how my little sister became the Phoenix."

 

She blinked at him, brought out of her reverie by surprise.

 

He patted the place next to him, "Come sit with me for a while, little sister," his voice was the same voice that had spoken to her when he had been hurt, when she'd first met him. "Tell me what has happened to you since we last met," he urged again.

 

It took her a moment to decide what to do. She was bemoaning her loneliness, wallowing in loss, and this man was offering a seat beside him. She scootched to his side, so that their arms were pressed together, and laid her head against the wall. What happened to me since we last met? she pondered. "An entire life has happened since we last met," she finally said, not sure of what else to say.

 

Then, she laughed.

 

It was as if a shade had been pulled up to reveal the sun coming through a window. She had lived an entire life since they had last met, and she was wallowing in her losses! Too big for her britches, indeed! She turned to him, a smile on her face, and told him about finding the Haunted Warehouse, and growing her garden, learning how to heal with the herbs she grew, and Chategris coming to her. She told him of her five children, and said, "You have two nephews and a niece!" As she said it, she took his upper arm in her hand to emphasize her words.

 

He chuckled, his frill shaking.

 

She told him about Toaster and Desi and Harry Potter. "That is how I became The Phoenix," she said.  

 

"Because your patients do not know their mythology?" Balboa chuckled, looking down at her companionably. "That's worse than me."

 

But she did not tell him about the little man by the Asian store in the funny hat, or the great firebird that burned all of her pain away.  That was hers, she’d never told anyone, it was hers and hers alone.

 

"How did you become, Balboa, Fred?" she teased.

 

The gave her a cheeky smile, "I was in a fighting my way out of the T.C.R.I. building," he said. "I didn't have a weapon, so I used my fists." He raised one of them, and looked at it as if it were a trophy. "A group of us ran into some policemen.  I knocked them out with punches, and one of the mutants asked how I knew how to do it.  I told him I boxed.  One of the other mutants I was with asked me my name, and I told him. He said, I punched like Rocky Balboa." He shrugged, "And here I am today."

 

The lack of explanation spoke volumes to her, and she replied, “You have been through a lot.”

 

“No more than you,” he told her.  “Only different.”

 

A rush of gratitude spread through her chest and surprised her.  No one had ever told her that before, that she had been through a lot, that she had been through trials these past twenty years to be where she was today, sitting next to her brother-in-captivity in the sewer juncture near the inlet.  It was always she who was telling it to others, and hearing it from someone else, a relative stranger, who now was strangely her relative, brought tears to her eyes so that she had to blink rapidly to not let them fall.

 

They fell into a quiet, and she put her head on his arm, her temple where her scar laid against his softly scaled skin. The muscles underneath it would move occasionally as he brought his drink to his lips, and it would remind her of her own glass of water, undrunk. At some point, she downed it, closed her eyes and simply put her attention on her temple and his skin and his moving bicep, and her mind was able to be quiet and white.

 

"Dinner time," Balboa brought her back around after a long while. "I never took you as one to meditate. You have surprised me quite a lot today, little sister."

 

She was meditating? She smiled sweetly, and nodded. "I haven't done it in a while," she admitted, taking the bowl of soup from the mutant that was passing them out.

 

"Why?" Balboa brought his bowl to his lips and blew on it.

 

She paused a moment, wondering how long she'd been in that other place that wasn't here, away from her body so that there was nothing to remember and nothing to know. "I am afraid," she admitted, "my big brother." The words sounded good to say, as if saying them made them not so heavy.

 

"We're all afraid," he sipped his soup, and she did the same.

 

"Yes," she agreed.

 

She finished her soup, bid her new big brother goodbye, and that he was welcome to find her whenever he wished, and made her way back into the sewers to go home.

 

She sat down with her tea, a light herbal blend.  She didn’t feel like the bitterness of black tea on her tongue, and there was no sugar or creamer to be found anywhere.  Holding the mug in her hand, her words bounced in her head again, “I am afraid.”

 

She was afraid.

 

She did not like to be afraid.  She told herself on a regular basis that she was not afraid, there was no need to be afraid.  She could defend herself as well as anyone else, and if she couldn’t she could run like the wind and get away.  She had lived for twenty years, survived, no she’d thrived, on nothing, what was there to be afraid of?   She was not afraid of going hungry.  She was not afraid of not having a roof over her head.  She was not afraid of bodily harm.  She wasn’t even afraid of death, she had, after all, been blessed with two lives, she was already dead.

 

She was afraid of being lonely, forever.

 

She was afraid of being lonely forever, and that was pathetic.

 

Who is afraid of being lonely?  People are afraid of being alone, she told herself.  She was not alone.  She would never be alone.  She had her children.  Unless some freak accident took them away from her, she would always have them.  She had other mutants around the city whom she knew she would stay with, forever if she wished.  She had the Inleters, and before that, The Gray Cats.  She had plenty of people, people who were not so unlike her if she dug deep enough.

 

But she was lonely.

 

Had she been lonely for so long, that she had forgotten she was lonely?  The feeling had become a companion, something always there, even amidst the groups of people she was with.  It was an apartness, a not-togetherness that had never gone away, it had been there since the day she felt the T.C.R.I. building all those years ago.  A not-belonging that did not lift when she met the homeless on the streets at night, when she met the Gray Cats, when she met the other mutants in the city, all of whom looked at her with gratitude and respect, if not a first, then shortly thereafter.  It had not lifted as her children had gotten older, it had not lifted as life had gone on.

 

But it had lifted for a short time in the cocoon of The Burrow.  It had lifted for a short time with a man whom, how many years earlier, she wouldn’t have considered a man.  She would have considered him a walking, talking rat.  But he was the closest thing she’d come across in two decades to not lonely.  She’d loved his company, his silent, almost brooding company, and it had lifted the loneliness.

 

She touched the back of her head, where her hair was just growing back from being ripped out, and she wondered if his turtles had found him, and if he had been lonely.

 

Having the loneliness lift had reminded her of how lonely she was.

  


She was lonely and afraid, and she hadn’t meditated in months and months because of it.  

 

You’re pathetic, woman, her own voice in her head was harsh.

 

She used to mediated all the time when the kids were little.  It was a life saver, in combination with yoga and gymnastics.  She had relied on the voice where the poetry came, where the unbidden thought resided, where sometimes quiet came to her running or angry mind.  The mediation had lead her to Splinter, and the lifting of the loneliness, and she had been unable to do the simple thing that was asked of her to keep it.  She had not kept him safe.  She had done the opposite, and now he was gone, not only to her, but quite possibly to himself.

 

She did not meditate because she afraid.

 

 _Sit_ , came the unbidden thought in her head, the voice that was not her own but was, in a tone she would have used with her own children had they been feeling this way.  It was not the first time, however, that she wished the voice had a body she could sink into for comfort.

 

I am sitting, she answered.

 

 _Sit_ , the unbidden thought said again.

 

She looked down at her thighs, on her chair, and put the tea mug down the table.  She would not be afraid anymore.

 

She slid of off the chair, and into a cross-legged posture, and closed her eyes, and listened to her own breathing.  It seemed foreign to her, listening to calm, normal breaths.  In yoga, she had been taught to count into four and out to eight, but years of practice had made it not necessary to do so, her breath took on the trained rhythm of a longer exhalation than inhalation.

 

In her mind’s eyes, coming from the base of her spine, were appeared the multitude of golden threads, going out in every direction, each one connected to a person.  She reached down and picked one randomly and plucked it.  It sang a note, just as the one she’d plucked, what seemed like, years and years ago.  She plucked another one, and it too let off a sound.  She plucked and plucked and plucked, and listened to the note that each one made, each one different from each other, each one connected to another person, and she wondered if the person on the other end could feel it.  She wondered which one was her own.

Then it hit her that it didn’t matter.  Each was connected to a person, and each of them converged on her.  Which mean, she also converged on each of them.

 

She smiled, and kept plucking.

 


	96. Chapter 96

Arcos had not realized how fast Medusa actually was until she wasn't. It took them three times as long to get from the spot where they bedded down that night back to the campsite.  She would slither, her only form of locomotion, the muscles in her body undulating until they came to the section of ribs that were hurt. The undulating would stop, and be replaced by a type of tremor.

 

The campsite was the same as they had left it, torn tents and tarps, with crustacean mutants littering the ground, and the three burned bodies of their friends.  

 

“So where do we go from here?” Aries asked.

 

Arcos peeked into one of the tents, and shook his head. There was nothing of any value in it, only a torn and dirty blanket and a rusted tin can of what had once been food.

 

Medusa looked around, the top of her body moving normally, the lower half unnaturally still.  “I don’t see how we’re going to get any information from here…”

 

"All I can smell is seafood," Arcos said. "And before that, all I could smell was decay."

 

"It's been a while since they've been here," Medusa agreed. "They've gone somewhere else."

 

"Can't we track them or something?" Aries looked about the clearing.

 

"Everything is these mutants," Arcos motioned to the mutants-in-helmets carcasses about them. "I don't think we'd even be able find any tracks, if any of us knew how to track."

 

"Why are they all wearing helmets?" Medusa asked.

 

"Fashion statement?" Aries suggested.

 

“Come on,” Arcos motioned for his siblings to follow him, “let’s get home so Mama can fix you up.”  He started out of the clearing and toward the water where they had hidden the boat.

 

Medusa chuckled, and then her face contorted in pain. "We've gotten spoiled," she said. "We expect to be fixed immediately."

 

"Why shouldn't we?" Aries replied. "That's one of the benefits of having The Phoenix for a mother."

 

"Because it makes times like this harder," Arcos said, putting his hand on a large rock as he walked down the trail to the water.

 

Aries shot his unhurt brother a dark look. "There isn't supposed to be times like this."

 

"There are always going to be times like this," Arcos chided. "Like Medusa said, we've been spoiled."

 

“So we came all this way for nothing,” Aries complained.   He held his shoulder as he descended to the beach.   “The two of you can’t use your noses for anything?”

 

Arcos twisted his mouth in annoyance, his nose going into the hair to emphasize his next words, but his face turned from one of irritation to one of dread.  He cursed.

 

"What?" Aries asked, raising his hand to get his axe, and then grimacing because he used his hurt arm.

 

"I thought I smelled snake," said a gravelly voice from the sand, "Master Shredder is looking forward to meeting the three of you."  The bony dog emerged from the boulders in front of them, the fish with legs at his side.

 

"Oh no," Medusa muttered, backing away, her body shuddering half way down.

 

"Why don't the three of you just come along nicely," said the fish. "Then no one has to get hurt."

 

Arcos took his sledgehammer from his back, taking Medusa's cue and backing up slowly. "You are the ones who get hurt when we tangle," he said. "Why don't you tell Master Shredder, whoever he is, that we aren't interested in meeting him."

 

"Master Shredder doesn't take declined invitations," the bony dog cracked his knuckles.

 

“I was hoping you’d decline the invitation,” the fish said.  “I could use a new bearskin rug.”

 

There was a moment of stillness in the clearing, the wind did not blow, and none of the mutants standing moved.  Then, a flurry of motion ensued, fur, scales, and metal all blurring into the background of the gray stone and white sand.

 

The fish with the metal legs went for the one who was closest to him, Arcos.  The bear managed to strafe out of the way, but it did not deter the fish.  He landed on his hands, twisted and turned himself around, so that he was now facing Arcos again, and then launched himself at the bear once more, feet first. Arcos grunted in pain as the metal leg made contact with his torso, doubling him over. For a moment, all he saw was silver and pink, and then, out of the corner of his eyes, a great streak of white flew over him, and the fish was no longer there.

 

Aries lowered his head, and made a dash at the fish that was launching himself at Arcos. He didn’t get to him before he saw his brother double over in pain from a powerful kick, but he did get there fast enough to ram into the fish before he’d recovered for another move. He leapt into the air, head down, the flat of his head and the curve of his horns hit the metal legged mutant in the side. He felt the almost too soft skin of the fish give to the force of his head, a strange, squishy sensation before the muscle below it caused his body to catapult off of Arcos.

 

Medusa curled in on herself, trying to make her huge body as small as possible. It was fruitless, and did the exact opposite of what she was hoping. Instead of making herself small and harder to hit, it made her a beautiful, solid, stationary target. The dog mutant landed his double fisted punch right in the middle of her showing torso. She let out a cry, something in between a shout and a hiss, and her body rippled backward.

 

The dog was already posed for another strike, his arm upraised, when Medusa darted her head and caught his arm in her mouth. With her two fangs straddling his forearm at an angle, she clamped her mouth down, and lifted the dog off of the ground. He let out a small whine, like a puppy, before kicking out a leg to strike her shoulders. While his foot made good on its threat, she was able to toss him across a boulder away from her. He hit the rock with a cracking thud.

 

Arcos managed to stumble up to see Aries brining his axe up to bear against the fish as the fish bit down. The fish mutant sported an impressive set of teeth, and obviously also knew how to use them.   The ram pushed the fish aside, and Arcos went at him with his sledgehammer held high. The pain in his chest burned with each breath in, but he still swung the hammer with enough force that it broke the rock that it hit as the fish danced out of his way. The fish recovered immediately, and a high kick to the upswing of the hammerhead sent Arcos sprawling once more.

 

The bear rolled down the path and landed on the beach, having trouble getting his footing back in the sand. He was fully expecting to have a set of teeth sink into his shoulder, and was surprised to find himself alone on the sand.

 

Medusa darted down the path, her back half trembling without her permission, to see the fish with legs send Arcos rolling to the beach. But in a blink, the dog was in front of her again, standing in a position that reminded her superhero trying to block someone’s path. “You weren’t going anywhere, were you?” he said in his gravelly voice.

 

“Away from you!” she hissed, bringing her tail to bare instinctually. She gasped at the pain, but kept up its momentum. It wasn’t enough, the dog caught her tail as it came to him, and he pulled on it, jerking her forward.

 

The pain from the jerk sent shock waves all through her body, so that for a moment all she saw was white awash with pain. She blinked, and her vision came back, just in time to see the dog land on her. She rippled her body violently, a great arc traversing down her, and sent the dog flying off of her again.

 

She moved to go back down the trail, but the dog was on her, as if she hadn’t even thrown him off, hitting her and kicking her in such a fast pattern, that she couldn’t move quickly enough to get away from him.   Despite her not wanting to, she finally had to grasp the dog’s body in her hands to get a grip on him. Her hands slipped up his sides, to stop at his chest, where she wrapped them around him to pull him in a type of hug.

 

The move seemed to surprise the dog, “Uh?” He looked into her black eyes and blinked.

 

Years with the Grey Cats came back to the young woman’s mind, and she laughed despite the pain. “Don’t get much lovin’, do you?” she teased. Then her body followed her arms, twisting around him and tightened, “Let me show you some love.” She made a quick wrench with her body, and the dog gave a squeak as the air was pushed out of his lungs.

 

Aries felt like he was whapped with a 2x4 across the back as soon as he got back up to his feet. He saw the pink flesh of the fish’s tail out of the corner of his eye before he felt the impact that sent him sprawling forward on his stomach. His hurt shoulder gave him a painful twang, and he brought his arm in close to his torso to protect it. He landed with it underneath him, his axe hand stretched out in front of him. He flipped over to his back, using his hurt arm as leverage, and screaming as he did so. As he came over, he brought his axe up in an arc, and it sliced through one of the tubes that was connected to the tanks on the side of the fish’s body.

 

An ugly hissing sound, along with a spray of water, hit the ram before the fish backed off of him, holding the sliced tubing.  Then, Arcos was there, hauling him up, and grunting at the same time.

 

“The boat!” he said. “Get in the boat!”

 

“But Medusa!” Aries, pointed up the trail as Arcos pulled him away.

 

“Medusa, the boat!” Arcos kept pulling his brother toward the water.

The snake mutant looked behind her, and seeing her two brothers heading toward their little boat, squeezed harder on the dog in her coils.  He seemed to get his mind back, even if he didn’t have his breath, and he sank his teeth into her at her side, puncturing holes in her t-shirt.  She hissed in pain again, and wrenched her body again until she heard a crack, and then let the dog go.  He fell in a lump.

She turned, tears in her eyes from the searing pain in her side, and the aching tremors at the bottom half of her body.  Her two brothers were already out on the water, the fish floundering on the beach holding a tube that was spurting with water.  He paid her no attention as she slithered by him, and into the water, after the boat.

She swam until she caught up with her brothers, both of whom were rowing with their hands for all they were worth.  She was able to slow down some, which was good, her head was beginning to feel woozy.  “That fish,” she said, “he can swim…”

“I think his legs weigh him down too much,” Arcos said, pointing to the beach. 

She looked behind her, and saw the fish was standing in the waves, they were crashing over his head occasionally as he yelled at the dog.  The dog looked unhurt, Medusa was surprised, but he stayed away from the waves as if he was not willing to let the water touch him.

“Keep going,” Aries muttered.  “We have to get some distance between us and them.”

“I don’t think they’re going to follow us,” Medusa said.

“You look like you’re going to throw up,” Arcos told her.

“I feel like I am going to throw up,” she said.  “That mongrel bit me.”

They got to the other side of the water and kept going until their bodies wouldn’t go any longer.  They rested until they could go again, and started home again during the day.  It took them the full two days to get home, even with moving during the dark and light.  Medusa’s slithering got slower and slower as they went, so that occasionally Arcos and Aries had to carry her.  Neither could do it for very long, there was simply too much of her to support on their own already hurt bodies.  Their progress was quiet, punctuated by groans and hisses, it contained none of the usual arguing they engaged in.  Discussion was all business, until they reached the Haunted Warehouse District.

It was daylight when they got home, and the Phoenix heard them before they reached the warehouse.  Amidst crying and kisses, they were all helped upstairs, where they were dutifully attended to, while Mama made it all better.

They recounted the last week in relishing detail, describing everything that happened.  Their mother listened in silence, a rare occurrence for her, her mind going a mile a minute.  There was something that she was missing, she thought to herself as she listened to them retell of their attempt to find their friends.  It was right beyond her grasp…

She gasped, a huge smile drawing on her face.  “I know how to find the Gray Cats!”


	97. Chapter 97

Phoenix did know why she hadn’t thought of it before.  It was silly that she hadn’t, because now that she had thought of it, it was painfully obvious. 

It only took the murder of crows two days to find them.

When she heard the flurry of feathers outside of her garden window, she knew it had to be them.  It was night, and no bird in their right mind was going to be out at this time.  But she expected more than two days, and so her excitement was uncontained when a crow alighted in her kitchen, his clawed feet clicking on the concrete as he landed.

“Found them, found them!” he cawed, as two of his fellows came into the warehouse after him.

“It was a piece of cake,” said one.

“No problem at all,” said the other.

Phoenix had rushed up from the chair on which she was sitting, almost knocking over her hot tea as she did so.  She reached to grab the mug as it tipped, hot juniper water brushing her fingers.  She put the mug down, and shook her fingers, to cool them.  “Where did you find them?”

The three kids were all in the living room watching the television, one of the many VHS tapes they had in their collection.  The boys got up from the couch and Medusa, still too sore to drape herself over the back of it, dragged herself to the kitchen.  All of them moved slowly, their bodies sore and stiff from previous week’s encounter, an odd paradox with the emotional buzz they were all giving off.

“Downtown!” said the crow, bringing his arms up and spreading out his feathers.

“Downtown?” Phoenix repeated.  “Here, downtown?”

“Yep!”

“But the TCRI building is downtown,” Arcos said.  “Wouldn’t downtown be crawling with Kraang?”

The crow shook his head.  “They’re not near the TCRI building.”

“Downtown is a big place,” said another crow at the same time.

“Where downtown?” Phoenix asked. 

“Tuggler-Craig Center.”

Phoenix laughed.  “The Tuggler-Craig Center,” she shook her head.  The Center as an older building, small compared to the buildings around it, at the edge of downtown that had no yet gotten revitalized.  “Did you talk to them?”

The crow shook his own head.  “No,” he said.  “We didn’t get close enough to land.”

“Only close enough to see,” said another crow.

“How many were there?” Medusa asked.

“We didn’t count,” came the reply.

Phoenix walked over to the head crow, and put his beak in her hands.  She smiled broadly, her green eyes dancing, and said. “Thank you!”  Then she drew his beak to her lips and kissed him with a loud smack, effectively ending the conversation.

The bird mutant drew back and shook his head again, clearing his throat.  ‘You’re welcome,” he cawed, his voice a little higher than normal.

“Anything else you need?” asked another crow.

Phoenix shook her head, “No, I don’t think so.  You?”

All three crows shook their heads and one by one flew out of the window.  “Later!” called their leader, and soon their dark forms were indistinguishable from the night in which they flew.

Phoenix turned to her kids, and looked them over.  All of them were hurt more than they’d wanted to admit, the amount of time it took to get home before getting patched up didn’t help any.

Medusa had, indeed, broken some of her ribs, and her movement was greatly impaired.  She still shuddered if she worked the muscles attached to that part of the ribcage, and while she was getting good at moving herself by omitting that part of her body, it was still a habit to ripple her entire frame.  When she did, she hissed an intake of breath, and had to simply wait until the pain resided before resuming whatever it was she was doing. 

Both boys were bruised pretty badly, and both complained about it when they first got home.  Their mother’s tingly light did little to help with this kind of healing, they felt.  You couldn’t see it or feel it right away, it was only alleviated slightly for a while, before the pain came back and another herbal compress had to be put on.  She had finally gotten angry enough with them both, that for the past day, she kept the ‘magic’ to herself, and had them dealing with themselves, compresses and all.

She wanted to jump out of the window and run all the way to the Center, bang on the front door and demand entrance, demand to see someone she knew, someone she cared about.  Anyone.  But he her heart sank.  “I don’t think the three of you are up to a trip to the Tuggler-Craig Center,” she said.

Her announcement was met with silence.  The noise of the TV in the background seemed incongruent with the conversation, “You can’t take my music,” cried the female lead.  “You can take anything, but not my music!”

“I think I can make it to the Tuggler-Craig Center,” Aries said sulkily.

“Really?” his mother cocked her hip to the side.  “Because you can’t bend down without groaning.”

“I can,” he said, and to prove it, he did so.  He only grimaced on his way back up.

“We have to go to them, Mama, we know where they are.”

“What if we run into trouble?” Phoenix knew her voice was weak, she didn’t want to protest.  “None of you can fight.”

“We can all fight,” Arcos promised.  “Look how much better we are than we were!”

“Oh, but I didn’t help at all with that,” she picked up her mug and took a sip.

Both boys were quiet.

“Mmmm?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“You helped,” Arcos said petulantly.  “You’re the healer.  You always help.”

“You really think you could wield a weapon?” she asked, looking to each of her kids in turn.

They all nodded, looking from each other to her.

“You’re not just saying that?”

They all shook their heads.

“We will go tomorrow night,” she decided.  “As soon as it starts to get dark.”  She motioned for her sons to come to her, “Come here, you two.  I will try to help your sore muscles along.”

In tending to her kids, that evening and the next day, she often wondered why her ability seemed so sporadic.   She would tell someone, if they asked, that she wasn’t really doing anything, that she was helping the body do what it already was doing it—healing itself.  Giving it a boost was not the same as starting a process.  She didn’t think she started any processes when she fed the little golden ants from the palms of her hands into one of her children, or anyone else for that matter.  She was quite sure the body knew what it needed to do, and the little golden ants only helped it along, so that another set of hands were mending. 

She had noticed a while ago that her forte seemed to be lacerations, and lacerations on herself being her ultimate strength in showing off her ability.  She wasn’t sure why, maybe because she could see a laceration where a bruise was harder to see?  Maybe a laceration just healed faster anyway, so it seemed like her tingly not-light worked better. 

She had also noticed that it worked better when she was not the one who initiated the healing, but rather the golden ants and the unbidden thought.  The tingling light would gather in her hands until they almost burned, and the releasing of it into a patient, the only way to alleviate the feeling, often brought on a more thorough healing than at any other time she tried to help.

It was at times like that, when she was at her best, that she was lost in the helping of what she was healing, that she felt like she truly was doing what she was meant to do.  It was afterward, when the afterglow had faded, and the peace that came with the doing without thinking had left her, that she wondered what good it was that she was the carrier of such an ability.  It could have been anyone, could be anyone.  Why was it her?  Why couldn’t she do a better job at using it?

Like now.

She was itching all day long to get going, so much so that she swung on the uneven bars most of the day, stopping only to play doctor, or rest her own arms.  The kids all tried to act as if they weren’t very hurt, and they may not have been, but they were still stiff, it was obvious.  She encouraged them to move, in hopes of convincing herself to get going a little earlier, that they were alright, but she wasn’t able to do so.   While they seemed to do alright after warming up, their movements were slow and deliberate for quite a while.  If they stopped for any length of time, the stiffness would return to their actions.

The sun finally began to go down, and all four of them hummed with excitement.  They all donned their weapons, and like in the old days, crawled out of the garden window to wander the city, keeping an eye out for aliens.

There were plenty of aliens to be had, or alien scanners, to be more precise.  They weren’t sure if there was an alien inside of the round scanners or if they were piloted remotely or automatically.  Either way, they hid behind buildings, garbage cans, and any other obstruction they could find when one approached, the familiar mechanical creaking accompanying it.

The closer they got to the downtown area, the less scanners and aliens there were. The TCRI building glowed with a sick pink at its apex, like a beacon to anything that might be in the sky.  Small, dark things floated and flew about it, blocking the color or the moon occasionally, but on the ground, it was relatively quiet. 

The Tuggler-Craig Center, a squat square 70s-esque building lay nestled in between two taller, more modern high rises, built in the 90s perhaps.   The four of them examined it from a block away, on street level, all of them bouncing to move, but afraid to do so.  None of the lights were on in the building, the windows were all dark.  A scanner passed by every once in a while, ever vigilant and never stopping.

“It looks empty,” Aries stated the obvious.

Phoenix felt her heart sink.  There would be no reason for the crows to lie to her, and the Grey Cats couldn’t have moved in such a short period of time, but it did, indeed, look empty and abandoned. 

“You would want it to look empty,” Arcos said, “so that you wouldn’t know anyone was there.”

“So how do we get in?” Medusa asked.  “We can’t go up and knock, can we?”

Phoenix listened to her children speaking, keeping her eyes on the scanner that passed by, and then out of sight.  “Come on,” she hissed, making her way across the street.  Once the four of them were pressed against the building, they worked their way to the side of it, and Phoenix pointed to a vent.  “Boost me up,” she instructed.

Arcos lifted his mother, letting his breath out slowly as he flexed his chest muscles to do so.  She pulled on the vent, and it came off with a loud clunk.

They all froze, staring at each other with large eyes.

Nothing happened.

They let out a collective slow breath.

Phoenix hoisted herself  into the vent shaft.

“Are you going to go unlock the front door or something?” Aries whispered annoyed.  “Because the rest of us can’t fit in the vent.”

“Watch your tone of voice,” she spat at him, her eyes fiery.  “Go sit by the front door,” she instructed.  “And I ‘ll let you in, since you can’t fit in the vent.”  Then she ducked into the shaft and was gone.

The shaft was dusty and cobwebby, but it there wasn’t anything living in it.  The cobwebs were all old, none of them newly spun.    She followed it until she came to the first ceiling opening.  It was to one of the side rooms, the moonlight shining in from the outside.  She pulled up the grating, and dropped as gently as she could to the ground. 

She froze, listening for any sound at all.  All she heard was her own breathing. 

Standing up, she looked around, and saw the sickening pink being to brighten the window.  She pushed herself flat against the wall as the scanner passed by, waiting for the pink color to fade before going back into the room.  She followed the hallway, looking for any signs of life at all, and not finding any.  The dust on the floor had only her own foot prints in it, and it was only her movements that disturbed the particles that now danced in the air. 

When she got to the front door, she unlocked it, and pushed it open, poking her head out to find her kids.  They were all in the entrance alcove.

“I don’t think anyone is here,” she whispered, letting them in.

“They have to be here,” said Aries.  “The crows said—“

“Shhhhh!” his brother, sister, and mother hushed him at his loud volume.

No sooner had the ‘shhh’ left their mouths, than a ‘whizz’ing sound flew by Phoenix’s ear.  She flipped round, her slingshot at the ready, and was faced for a moment with only darkness.  Then, a flurry of fur was on her, white like the moonlight, and wielding a sharp object.

She danced out of its way just in time, she felt the air move from it.  She turned as she moved, bringing her outer leg up as she did, and kicking her assailant in the chest.   It let out a grunt, before leaping at her as it recovered.  She saw fangs and heard a growl as she dropped to the ground, letting the figure fly over her.  She popped back up, and the figure had stopped their flight and turned to face her again.

With the light as her ally, she could now get a good look at her attacker.  He was a silver, his pointed ears on top of his head ending in black tufts, as did the tip of his muzzle, his paws, and the tip of his bushy brush.  His brown eyes were contorted in anger and fear, the knife he held in his hand sharp and deadly.  His body was well toned, sinuous and built to move stealthily and lethally if it had to.   He raised his arm to come in for another strike.

Phoenix took a step back, her slingshot pulled back.  “Crevan?”

 


	98. Chapter 98

The figure in front of Phoenix stopped short.  “Mama?” he whispered.

She had never heard him say that word to her, not in addressing her, not when he was a boy or when he’d become fully grown as a man.  But she recognized the voice that said it, a voice that she often thought would have been one of her own household if things have been different, who would have called her that.

“Oh, Crevan!”  She opened her arms, exposing her chest and torso to any attack that may come to her.  Her skin crawled, arguing with her mind that she not leave her vital organs exposed.  Her eyes became fuzzy as tears welled in them, so all she saw once again was a white blur.

The silver fox rushed at her, his teeth showing, his brown eyes curled into half moons.  “You’re alive!” 

She wrapped her arms about him as he hit her, her lips coming to his furry cheek.  Then she recognized the voices of others in the room, her friends, people she had been intimately entwined with for the past decade of her life, who loved her and her children, whom she loved.  Her voice was caught in her throat, nothing but breathy squeaks came out.   She held his face in her hands and covered it in motherly kisses, occasionally touching a wet spot and not knowing if it was his nose, his tears, or her own on his fur.  She heard the voices of her children in greeting those around them, “You have to come!” said Crevan, still cradling her in his arms. 

Then she was being dragged up a stairway.  The smell was the same as the in the air ducts, dusty and old, tinted with the tang of off-gassing chemicals.  On the third floor, Crevan pushed open a set of double doors and the entire scene changed, as if the page in a picture book had been turned.  The large room, enclosed entirely in glass that lead to the outside, was filled with the smell of sweat and animals—mutants!

“Medusa!” she heard Razz’s voice call from somewhere in the back of the room.  Just as suddenly as she’d been engulfed in Crevan’s embrace, so the room erupted with talking and people were around her, giving her no space. 

She was in the arms of one mutant, and then another, Toaster, Dezi, Gristle, Bunny, Sophila, Razz, Klashtooth, all of them were there, in her arms, and then out of them again, their tears mingling as they all kissed each other, until she was against Chategris.

Then her lips were against his.  She could feel the silkiness of his fur against her cheeks, it stuck to her lips where she kissed him against his own.  The feel of the fur wasn’t right, it was too soft, too much like a fluffy angora.  She could feel his fur on her cheeks, and she thought that she shouldn’t be able to, and that it should be courser.  A slight alarm began to rise in her chest, that something was wrong with what was happening. It was slightly skewed, like the Not-Haunted Warehouse, it appeared to be correct, but was off a little.  She tightened her arms around him, and felt a sob well up inside of her.  It erupted against his mouth, and he drew back to look at her.  “Mon amour” he said, bringing his mouth back to down to hers. 

His voice gripped her chest, where the alarm was rising.  It was smooth, the accent so familiar, so much like her own.  But again, it was askew, correct but not entirely accurate.  As her lips moved against his, she could feel the movement of his philtrum, wet and soft.  The feeling of something not being right kept growing, so that she started to shake, and the tears that she had been shedding began to flow more freely.

She broke their kiss off, and pulled his head to her shoulder, so that she clutched at him in a desperate embrace, burying her face in his neck.  “You’re alive!” she managed to get out, but she wasn’t sure if he heard her or not.  The smell of him, like his accent, familiar, warm and tangy, but not what it was supposed to be.  There is something wrong with you, Phoenix thought to herself.  You have been away from your people for so long, you have forgotten what they are supposed to be like.

His lips were trailing her shoulder through her shirt, the glossy feel of his fur on her neck.  “We thought you were dead,” he said, in English.  “We thought you were dead.”

His speaking in English brought the crooked aspects of her world back to right, with an almost violent shift.  He sounded like he should, he smelled like he should, he felt like he should, like Chategris, her Chategris always had.  The vice in her chest let go, leaving an empty space, akin to the one that now resided in her solar plexus.  She didn’t want the smell of warm and tangy, or the smooth, sultry voice of a sexy Haitian accent.  She wanted grapes and musk, she wanted the staccato that read to her, from a longer muzzle, with fur much less silky.

She pulled away from him and looked into his eyes.   “We thought you were dead, too!”

“Come,” he said, and dragged her over to an open section of the room.  They’d arranged the floor with the cubicle walls, partitioning off little sections to make rooms and areas.  He led her to a place that was awash with cushions, arabesque, and sank down into them, dragging her with him.  She sank into him, as if he were one of the cushions, and wrapped her arms about his chest, even though he did not smell like she wanted, or feel like she wanted.  He reached down and kissed her lips again, and she let him, she kissed him back, and tasted the salt of her own tears still falling.

When they drew back from each other, she saw the buzz had died slightly, it was now broken into sections of the room instead of one great hum.  She expected to see her children, but they were not in the group around them.   Klashtooth and Bunny where among the cushions, along with a few others.   Chategris adjusted his arms about her, bringing her up closer to his head so she could rest on his shoulder. 

“We came to the cargo bay,” Phoenix pulled herself up to look at him, “but you were gone.”

“We fled when we were attacked,” Chategris explained.  “We were taken, quite by surprise.”

Phoenix nodded, “We were, too.”

“About a week after the attack we were able to get the Haunted Warehouse,” he said, his eyes looking her over as if he’d never seen her before, “but it was destroyed.  We thought you were destroyed with it.”  He pulled her toward him to kiss her again.

She resisted his pull, something in what he said struck her as wrong, but she couldn’t tell what.  “We came to you right away,” she said, “but you had already been attacked.”  Her stomach turned as she realized what was wrong with what he’d said…it took him a week to get to them…a week.   “Did you all come to the Haunted Warehouse?”

He pulled her harder, and she pulled back, placing her hands on his chest.  “We were getting situated, mon amour,” he said.

“I made sure to bring the best we had left to come and get you,” Klashtooth put in.

She turned to look at the rabbit mutant, and it made her fall into Chategris’ chest as he pulled her again at her turning.   “We went to Flatbrush to look for you,” she told the Grey Cats second in command.  “But it was crawling with Kraang.”  The tears that had begun falling at Crevan’s embrace still fell, but the excitement behind him had gone, and left nothing in its place.

Chategris put his fingers to her chin and turned her face to him, “We went there too, but then circumvented it.”  He bent down to kiss her again, and again she let him, until his rough tongue brushed her lips.

She sniffed and turned her head downward, so she was resting on his chest.  “We were told you were on Staten Island.”

“We were for a while,” he admitted.  “But then the ninjas began to infest the island, so we left.”

She remembered what her kids had told her about their find at the Staten Island campsite.  “All of you left?”  Her voice was steady, but the tears were still falling.

“All who were still alive,” Chategris’ voice had an edge to it.  “I have more than just three children under my care, mon amour.”

She kept her face at his chest, his shirt was getting wet where her cheek lay against it.  He did, indeed, have more than three children under his care.   He had an entire group he had to try, that he had succeeded in keeping alive.  He had moved them all over the city, at least twice, to keep them safe.  He still had a fair amount of mutants with him, she could not begrudge him the choices he made for his people, she told herself.  That did not stop her own voice from answering with a bitter lace, “Yes, you have more than three children under your care, mon ami.  How did you all come to be here?”

She felt him stiffen underneath her at the nomenclature she used.  “It was Klashtooth’s idea,” Chategris said, and she felt him move his head in the rabbit’s direction.  His paw stroked her shoulder and neck as he spoke.

“The Kraang aren’t so present here,” Klashtooth said, “besides around the TCRI building.”

“But there are scanners everywhere,” Phoenix gestured to the windows facing the street.

“The scanners don’t see us,” Chategris said.

She looked up at him.  “what do you mean, the scanners don’t see you?”

Chategris’ smiled smugly, clearly enjoying having information she did not, “They do not see mutants, ma Phenix,” he said, reaching his head forward to kiss her once again.  She received it as she did the others, kissing him back, and the moving her head away.

“They’re automated,” Klashtooth explained.  “They’re looking for living things that haven’t been touched by the mutagenic ooze.  If it finds something,” he smiled evilly, “it splats it with mutagen.”

“The only person in danger here of the scanners is you,” Bunny said, her voice not entirely nice.  “”The rest of us are under the radar.”

 “Where did you go,” Chategris asked in French, now excluding anyone else within their hearing from the conversation, “since you were obviously not crushed along with your building?”

She pushed herself up from him, and while he didn’t pull her back down, he did keep his arms firmly around her, preventing her from doing anything other than sit up.   Looking at him, the emptiness in her swelled, and it seemed to her that her tears began to fall harder, as if to fill up the space.  His eyes had a feral look in them, the look of a tom cat that was sizing up his prey.   She didn’t want to share what had happened in the sewers for the past few months.  She didn’t want to let it out, and no longer be hers.  If she shared it, it seemed it would be marred, that little piece of pleasantness, with the man who smelled like grape and musk, whose grunted affirmations made her laugh, whose arms she’d felt about her only twice, and both times were large enough that she doubted the arms of anyone else would replace the feel of them.   “We went into hiding,” she said in a small voice.  “We were hurt, and went into hiding.”

He reached up and wiped her cheek with his paw, the soft fur sticking to her wet skin as he did.  While it was gentle and warm, it did not leave the desire for more touch on her cheek that another’s finger, who’d once wiped away a tear, had left her.  Chategris slipped his hand behind her head, to draw her face to his again.  When his lips pressed to hers, and his tongue swept across hers urging her to open her mouth, she parted her lips a little.  As he tried to deepen the kiss, she pushed him away, her face still soaked with oncoming tears, and she shook her head.  “We were hurt,” she said again, “and we went into hiding.”

He regarded her, blinking his amber eyes slowly, “You are not hurt now, Ma Phenix,” he said.  “You are with me, and I will take good care of you.”  She put her hand back on his chest, and a little sob came out.   He stroked her hair, and she felt the purring coming from his chest, and it rankled her that as she would cry, he would make such a noise.  “Chut, mon amour,” he whispered.  “You are here now.”

“Oui, mon ami,” she told him, her voice breaking from her tears, “I am here now.”


	99. Chapter 99

Medusa reared up, ready to strike as a group of mutants came out of the dark, when she recognized Crevan’s scent.  Then, she heard her mother exclaim, heard Crevan reply, and they were surrounded by their friends.  They were greeted with hugs and claps on the back.  Her adrenaline was still rushing through her body, causing her to consciously keep from coiling up to get ready to strike anything near her.  As they were ushered up the stairs, she heard “Medusa!” in a most unmistakable voice.

“Razz!” her own voice was a thin hiss, she wasn’t even sure it was audible above the din of greetings going on about her.  But he had already seen her, whether he heard her or not, and she reared up to get above the heads of those about her, so she could see him too.  He was toward the back of the crowd, working his way toward her.  She slithered, making large ‘u’s with her body to clear the way around her, until the crowd began to open up, allowing Razz to finally reach her.

She whooped, again a thin, hissy sound.  Darting as fast as if she were attacking, she wrapped her body around the anole, lifting him bodily off of the floor easily.   She squeezed slightly, a parody of what she would do with an enemy or a meal, and then set it him down. 

As soon as he was released from her coils, he reached his arms out, and cupped her cheeks in his hands.  He pressed his bony lips to hers, his dewlap flaring slightly so that she felt it against her throat.  The obvious display of physical attraction made her blush, though it was most likely difficult to see underneath her dark green scales.   She pulled her head back, and laughed nervously, as well as in genuine pleasure, her black eyes blinking.

She had missed him!  She’d thought, somewhere deep down in the dark of the night that she wouldn’t see him again, and she had to make that alright within herself if she didn’t.   She thought she had done a good job of it, that she could easily release the thought of him once she decided that she was not going to find him.  But having him here, with his light green scales contrasting on her tropical dark green, with his own eyes shining with excitement to see her, with his dewlap showing, in an open and unabashed delight in seeing her, made her heart swell to her throat, and she had the unexpected realization that releasing someone was not so easy as simply deciding to do it.

She slid her arms around his neck, and drew him in to a hug, pressing her cheek against his.  Again, she felt his dewlap swell slightly, as he bent his muzzle about her neck, and pulled her close to him. 

“I thought you were dead,” he whispered in her ear.

She didn’t know how to answer him, a series of phrases ran through her head, but what she ultimately said was simply, “No, I wasn’t dead.”

He laughed, and pulled away from her to look at her, his face shining.  She had only seem him look like this a few times, and she glancing down at his throat and seeing the red of his dewlap as it stayed slightly extended fueled another bout of embarrassment.   When he was done laughing, he drew her to him again, more of an urging for her to come to him, as there was no way he could move any part of her massive body.  She fell into his arms willingly, resting her head on his shoulder, and tightening her thin arms about his body.

###

Arcos clasped Crevan in a bear hug, as the fox exclaimed, “Big brother,” once he’d released his mother into the waiting arms of the leader of the Grey Cats.  “I can’t believe it’s you!”  The silver vulpine was engulfed in the bear’s arms, barely visible, and barely audible.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Arcos grinned from ear to ear, freeing the fox, and holding him at arm’s length.  He got several claps and hugs, and none too few kisses, but he held onto Crevan, as if he were going to lose him in the throng of people.  A woman he knew slightly, a very attractive horse mutant named Ghadira, hooked his free arm, and effectively stopped anyone else from greeting him in any fashion other than a pat on the shoulder or back. 

He was wary of any woman in the Grey Cats coming onto him, as he’d realized early on in his explorations that oftentimes her interest in him was political.  Being the current girl of one of the Phoenix’s sons put her in a position a little higher up on the totem pole, no matter where she originally resided in the gang hierarchy.  However, today, he didn’t mind so much, there were less attractive women to have hanging on his arm, and there was a certain satisfaction in having a girl choose him over virile Aries.  

So with Crevan in one hand and Ghadira in the other, he made his way over to Medusa and Razz, who had moved to the edge of the crowd.  The lizard looked a little put out for a moment as seeing them approach, but the look on his face changed when Arcos threw all of them into his arms.  A series of laughs met his ears as the five of them embraced, and then Crevan pulled at them, and motioned to the back of the room.   “Come over here,” he said, “we need to hear all about what happened to you!”

Arcos looked behind them, to see where Aries was, and usher him over, but he couldn’t see his brother anywhere.  He glanced at Medusa, who was already following Crevan.  She seemed to know what he was asking with his gaze, and she shrugged her tiny shoulders.

Crevan settled them down in a room made of cubical walls, obviously a personal space to either him or Razz, or perhaps both.  Crevan had always been one of Razz’s favorite students when they were all learning how to fight in their young youth, and would have surprised Arcos for the two to have each other’s back.  He sank down onto a pile of cushions, Ghadira beside him, and Crevan on the side of her.  Across from them, on another pile of pillows, Medusa coiled herself languidly, and Razz settled himself inside one of the coils so that he was leaning against her body like a chair.  He laced his four fingers in Medusa’s, and she smiled at him, black eyes shining merrily.

“What happened to you?” Crevan asked, leaning forward to see Arcos around Ghadira’s impressive horse head. 

Arcos smoothed some of Ghadira’s hair away from her face, to give him a better view of Crevan behind her.  “We were attacked by the Kraang,” he said simply.  “What happened to you?”

Crevan laughed, “We were attacked by the Kraang,” he echoed. 

“We came straight over to you when the Kraang attacked our house,” Medusa said, “but the Cargo Bay was already empty.”

The nervous glance exchanged between Razz and Crevan was not lost on the big bear.  “We were attacked by a bunch of Kraangdroids,” Razz explained.  “They came out of nowhere and just started shooting.  Chategris didn’t even order us to fight, we retreated immediately, it was that sudden.”

“We saw all of the insects…” Medusa said.

Razz nodded, his head bobbing against her body.  “When one of their lasers hit something that burned, it just burned.  The whole pile of hibernating mutants went up.”  He moved his hands in an upward motion and made a poofing noise.

“They came down our street,” Medusa put in.  Arcos saw she could not see Razz’s face from where she sat, or else she’d be much less at ease than she was.

“Did you not try to get any of them out?” Arcos asked quietly, again moving Ghadira’s pretty brown mane.  The horse, a brown and white paint, nuzzled her nose into Arcos’ neck, so he craned his head to see over her. 

Crevan looked uncomfortable, “It all happened so fast.”

“Where did you all go?” Arcos asked, changing the subject.

The anole looked at the snake’s brother warily, and Arcos returned the look.  “We went to Flatbush first.”

“That’s where we thought we’d find you!” Medusa said happily, as if she’d solved a puzzle.  “But when we got there it was a warzone.”

“It was when we got there too,” Crevan said.  “We went around to avoid the fighting, and finally ended up at the water.”

“Ending up at the water was not a good idea,” Razz chimed in.

“Yeah,” Arcos muttered, “we found that out.”

“Did you end up near the water?” Crevan asked.

Medusa answered, “We ended up in the sewer.  We went underground while we were in Flatbush.”

“Literally underground,” Razz chuckled.

“Like moles,” Arcos said.

“You’ve been the sewers the whole time?” Ghadira asked, backing her head away from Arcos a little.

The bear laughed, and pushed her slightly, toward Crevan.  “No, we managed to emerge in the spring.”

“Like moles,” Medusa said with a smile.

“We’ve been at the Haunted Warehouse,” Arcos continued.

“But the warehouse was destroyed,” Razz twisted to look at Medusa.  “We went to try and find you, about two weeks after the invasion.”

There was an uncomfortable silence in the group, as neither Medusa nor Arcos answered.  The bear glanced at his sister, but she was looking at Razz, the merriment having dimmed in her shiny black eyes.  Two weeks?  It took them two weeks to come to look for them?  They had gone to them first thing, not for help, but to see if they needed to be helped, because they were their friends.  It took them two weeks to come and look for The Children of the Phoenix and their mother?  Perhaps the Grey Cats had a greater trouble getting settled than they had.   “Where were you when you came to look for us?”

“We were at the beach,” Razz said, twisting back around to look at Arcos.  “We managed to hunker down there for a few weeks until the Kraang brought in reinforcements.”

“How long did it take you to get to the beach?” Medusa asked.  Arcos felt his heart strings pull at her question, she was thinking along the same lines as him.

“Two days,” Crevan said.  “We had to hide out at intervals while aliens or the army passed by.”

“Or fought,” Razz said.

“We only lost two people, though,” Crevan said proudly.

“Other than the pile of hibernating mutants,” Arcos’ voice was not accommodating.  Again, there was an uncomfortable silence.  Ghadira scooted closer to Crevan, and leaned against him, taking her weight off of Arcos.  “So, you were at the beach for two weeks getting settled before you came back to look for us?”  He meant to say it casually, but he knew he hadn’t. 

“Chategris had us at the beach for two weeks before we came to look for you, yes,” Razz’s voice had an edge to it also.  “As soon as we were able, we came.  Your warehouse was rubble.  We thought you were dead.”

Arcos looked from Razz, to Crevan, to Ghadira and felt his heart sink.  The thought that the Grey Cats were still alive, that their friends, their extended family, was still alive, had kept he and his siblings going many a day down in the Burrow, when their mother was absorbed in Splinter, and they were left to pick up pieces of an easy life they didn’t know they’d had.  But he had no reason to think that they Grey Cats would feel the same way.  They were a collective, not a group of individuals, they did not act on their own.  They acted under someone else’s authority, that authority being Chategris.  If the leader of the Grey Cats did not want any of his people to look for the Phoenix and her children, then none of them would.  They would all capitulate, like they had at the Battle of the Pretty Building.  Arcos sighed.  That battle seemed years ago, now.

“So from the beach, you ended up at Staten Island?” he asked.

Crevan nodded.  “We did n’t loose a single person going over, either!”

“How did you get over?” Medusa asked.

“On anything that would float,” Razz said.  “We collected things for two days so everyone had something.  Then, we swam.”  The anole gave a smug smile, “We went over in fives, two hours a apart.  Chategris was in the first group, Klashtooth was in the last.  Everyone got across without incident.”

Arcos smiled, but he didn’t feel it in his heart.  “It was your idea, I take it,” he asked.

Razz nodded.  “It was.  And Chategris listened to it.”

That elicited a chuckle from both Medusa and Arcos.  “We found your camp on the Island,” Medusa said.  “We saw you had to leave in a hurry.”

Crevan nodded, “A bunch of sea mutants, crabs and lobsters and stuff, came on us, out of the woods.  They were huge—“

“—and hard,” Razz interrupted.

“—and hard,” Crevan repeated.  “We grabbed what we could, and headed back toward the heart of the city.”

“We finally ended up here, once we realized that this close to the TCRI building, the scanners don’t detect us,” explained Razz.

“The scanners don’t detect you?” Medusa asked, snaking her body around so her head was in front of Razz.  “What do you mean?”

“They don’t see us,” he said.  “They’re looking for anything living that hasn’t come in contact with the mutagen ooze.”

“At least, we think that’s what they’re doing,” Crevan put in.  “When they find something, they squirt it with the mutagen and it changes into a…pink blobby version of what it used to be.”

“But the pink scan passes right over us,” Razz put his arms out, as if he’d just accomplished a great trick. 

“They don’t do that where we are,” Medusa said.  “They attack us with extreme prejudice.”

Razz laughed, and stroked her cheek.  Arcos could not see the look on her face, but his sister’s body language did not indicate that she found it as enticing as she might have before they had started talking.  “That’s why we’re here,” Razz said.  “And not there.”

 


	100. Chapter 100

The Phoenix work up with a purring underneath her cheek, a warm body cradling her.  She yawned lazily, and the purring underneath her became stronger and she felt arms stroke the side of her body, brushing against her ribs and the side of her breast.   Her head was foggy, and her mouth felt as if it covered in fuzz.  Then she remembered the night before, her bittersweet allowance of Chategris’ affection, rough kisses against her mouth, hands on her body that she had to twist to rearrange into less intimate positions.  The entire night had been a dance of borders with fuzzed lines and would become sharper at one point, and then blur again later on.   She would let him kiss her, returning the kiss when given, but never seeking it out.  When he tried to deepen the kiss, or his arms began too tight around her, she would push him back, move her head out of the way, to his chest, or to his shoulder, out of the reach of his lips.  They dozed throughout the night, neither one truly sleeping, the dance keeping them not fully awake.

The entire night she felt slightly empty, like a present in too large of a box.  It wasn’t that nothing was there, indeed there was.  She was happy to see Chategris, it was the first time she could remember being happy to see him.  She was happy to see everyone.  She was happy to see so many of them, that they’d made it out relatively unscathed, still a unit.    There was a familiarity to Chategris’ scent, a kind of comfort like coming home to one’s parents’ house, even if one’s childhood was not a happy one.  There was a security in being held in his arms, that if she chose, she could stay there.  It was warm there, if not safe.  She could keep herself safe, she did not need someone else to do it.   There was the reassurance that she was desirable, despite the fact that she was stringy, had crow’s feet, had a body full of scars, had hair that had once been a beautiful auburn that was now, ever so slowly, turning platinum.  His lips on hers, the soft fur on his face silkily moving against her lips and cheeks, his rough tongue, like a cat, made her feel wanted.  She was wanted by someone, someone who knew her, someone who knew her strengths and her weaknesses, someone’s strengths and weaknesses she also knew.  That should be enough, she would think occasionally through the night.

But then something small would happen, and the almost empty feeling would come to the forefront of her mind, and bring tears to her eyes, so that she wept silently on Chategris’ chest.  He takes, she thought, he does not ask.  He took his kisses from her, tilting her head back, and even occasionally cupping her face in one paw, so that she would have trouble moving away, to put his lips to hers.  He would try to deepen the kiss, his rough tongue probing for entrance into her mouth to ignite the small nibbling of lips into a passion.  She had allowed three, three dancing of tongues, three open-mouthed kisses.  Each time, thinking that the warmth of his arms, the familiarity of his smell, the tiny filled place in the middle of the emptiness would make it alright, would make it enough.  But each time, the emptiness would well up in her, and she would start to cry again.  Pushing him away, she retreated back his chest, damp with her previous tears. 

His roaming hands through the night would bring her from the slight sleep she was in, a pleasant sensation in and of itself, until a nano-second later, when she remembered where she was.  There were other people in the room, near them, next to them, and he did not care.  He would take what he wanted, and he wanted her body, it did not matter to him who was around, or how inappropriate the action was.  She had a small argument with herself at one point, Is it inappropriate to touch someone you want with others around?

Yes, she answered.

Why? she asked.

Because they can see you, was the reply.

Does it matter that they can see you?

Why?

Because they could be watching.

But why does it matter if they are watching?  Is the wanting not enough?

Her mind was silent for a moment, and she wished that it was the unbidden thought she was arguing with, and not herself.  At least then she could be angry, at least then she would not know the reply the moment before her mind said it.

Because it is crass.

So what? she told herself hotly.  Who is there to be dignified for?

It shows bad breeding.  It is what animals do, rut in front of their pack to show dominance.  You are a person.  He is a person.  You are not animals.  That is what makes it wrong.  These are people.  All of these are people, not freaks, not monstrosities, not abominations.  They are people, and deserve the respect of people, they are who you are to be dignified for.

Then her chest tightened with embarrassment at her own vulgarity, and she moved so Chategris’ hands were somewhere else, or she would physically place them on a less intrusive part of her body. 

She yawned, her cheek still against Chategris’ purring chest, and then sat up, blinking the fog away from her brain and eyes.  He remained laid back, a smug smile on his face, his purr so loud that she could hear it, even sitting up.

“Bon matin, mon amour,” he said in a deep voice.

“Bon matin, mon ami,” she replied, sitting back on her bottom to give the two of them some distance.

He reached his hand out, and cupped the back of her head, pulling as he did.  She resisted, and then he noticed the patch of hair by her neck that was only inches long.  He moved her long locks out of the way, and tilted to the side to get a better look at her.  “What happened here?” he asked in French.

“My hair was pulled out,” Phoenix said, moving her head to the side to get out of his grip.

“How did it get pulled out?” he demanded, his lip curled slightly.

The tone of his voice took her aback.  It was the same tone he used with Bunny when telling her to do something and she put up resistance to doing it.  It was the same tone he used with Klashtooth or Razz to order them in some activity.  “A fight,” she answered, annoyance willing in her.

“What kind of fight?” he pressed, his voice dangerous.

A flash of Splinter came to her mind, of her holding him and resting her head on his head, and his arms wrapped around her tightly, as if she might disappear if he let go.  The empty place in her solar plexus swelled to take up her whole torso, and when it hit her chest it turned to anger.  She did not belong to Chategris.  She was her own, to choose to whom she belonged, and whom she didn’t.  She belonged to Arcos, she belonged to Aries, she belonged to Medusa, she even belonged to Ailurosa and Aetos, long dead in the ground.  She was not a Grey Cat.  She did not belong to Chategris, and she did not have to cower to anyone’s demands.  She took a deep breath and leaned forward, a scowl on her face.  “A hair pulling fight,” she ground out.

The leader of the Grey Cat sat up, bringing himself momentarily closer to her, before scooting back.  He schooled his features. His eyes became hooded, the snarl left his face, and was replaced by the nonchalant, smug grin he usually held when he spoke to her.  “I can see,” he said, waving his paw toward to her head.  “I wanted only to know who did it to you, to pay them back in kind.”  His voice was drawled out, his normal self-satisfied attitude back.  For some reason, in her mind, his voice had not sounded this way, it sounded like it did last night, when he was happy to see her.  But this was how he normally spoke, she realized, not the way she thought of him in her head.

“I do not need you to fight my battles for me,” she said, softening her tone some.

“Non,” he said, leaning forward, a dangerous look coming to his smile.  “You already have everything you need, do you not, ma Cherie?”  He then turned to the mutant closest to him, and said in English, “La Petite Medicienne has not had breakfast yet.”  He then turned back to Phoenix.  “You are hungry, non?”

As if in reply, her stomach growled, she felt it rather than heard it, but she saw Chategris’ ears twitch in her direction.  “Oui,” she answered.  “I am, merci.”  She then tilted her head slightly, and asked the question she should have asked as soon as she entered the room last night.  “Is anyone hurt?”

Chategris laughed, throwing his head back, “A little late for that, eh?” he teased maliciously, the animalistic smile still on his face.  “My arms were good enough last night to keep you from your patients.”

She felt a flare of anger accompanied by her stomach turning uncomfortably at his words.  “Apparently,” she said, shame welling up in her cheeks.  “But now it isn’t.”  Someone came with a granola bar and a cup of tea, black with no cream.  She took it from them gratefully with a “Thank you.”

Chategris waved his hand dismissively, “Eat,” he said.  “Then we can call for everyone to have their cuts and bruises patch up, eh?”

#

Aries held the girl in his arms, smelling the slight musk of her body that had accumulated though the night of highly vigorous activity.  She snored very gently, almost a whistle, her breath moving the wool on his chest as he held her.   He didn’t know her name, wasn’t sure if he would know her name after she woke up in his arms, their naked bodies pressed together and covered only a found sheet.  Aries didn’t even remember where they’d found it.

In fact, he barely remembered going down the stairs back to the bottom floor, to find an empty room to spend the night.  When he had come up the stairs, following Crevan, he’d been inundated with back claps, hugs, and kisses.  He’d grabbed the first woman he’d been able to get his arms around, this one, a guinea pig mutant.   When he’d crushed her to him, pressing his lips to hers hungrily, she’d opened her mouth for him, and held onto his neck tight.  It was all the encouragement he’d needed to pick her up while still kissing her, and carry her down the stairs to somewhere more private.

They hadn’t said anything to each other that didn’t need to be said.  Moans and grunts punctuated by ‘yes’ or ‘there’ or an occasional ‘oh my god’ was all was accompanied the sound of two bodies, hot and slick, rubbing up against each other.

Now, with the morning sun beginning to slowly lighten the room through the darkly tinted one way glass  windows, with his body warmed by the body lying on him, his mouth dry from the previous night’s exertions, his mind was able to run.  In the night, there had been only him and her, whatever her name was doing one of the only things that could quiet his mind.  He had been wanting this for months, aching to be buried in a woman in whatever way he could.  But now, after an entire night filled with exactly what he wanted, his chest felt like his stomach did when it was queasy and heaving.  The only other time he’d felt this was when he first fought the Kraang, and after the terror had subsided, after knowing that each of the members of family were still alive, he’d been left with this feeling in his chest.  It didn’t feel good.  It felt so close to wanting to vomit, only the feeling would sink in to his gut, it stayed in his chest, right where her head was resting and her breath was fluttering on his wool.

For the first time, he understood what his mother was talking about when she told him about ‘emotional baggage.’


	101. Chapter 101

There had not been any real injuries within the Grey Cats, they were amazingly healthy, considering.  Many of them told the Phoenix of a cold that had run through them in the winter, scaring most of them, but leaving no lasting damage.   A few of them had laser burns, which had scarred into very ugly lines, but had healed completely, and left no damage other than the owner’s loss of attractiveness.

Everyone she saw was on edge, despite the excitement of the night before.  Chategris stayed by her side, as he did in their early days when she ministered to his people, watching her like a hawk waiting for a meal.  The way his Grey Cats acted reminded her of the mutants in Flatbush, when he had told her that they should be afraid of him, they should know their place. They looked at him furtively, glancing back from him to her.  She tried her best to smile reassuringly, to let each of them know they were alright.  With each additional person coming to either say hello to her or to be inspected by her, her chest tightened reflexively, so that she had to breathe deep to keep herself calm.  But for the first time in years, she felt afraid of the same thing they were—their leader.

She knew that Chategris had to intimidate his people to a certain extent in order to keep things going within his group.  He was a warlord, for all intents and purposes, and had to maintain order among the ranks.  She was under no illusion that should he show some sort of weakness that one of his people thought could be exploited, they would seize the opportunity to overturn his leadership.  She had never heard of it happening within the Grey Cats, though.  What had occurred that his people were now acting this way toward him?

Occasionally he would reach out and stroke her neck, on the side of her head where her hair was still only a few inches long.  It gave her chills, so that she shivered sometimes.  When she did, she turned to glare at him.  He gave her a feral smile with hooded eyes, and then leaned in to kiss her.  She returned each kiss, each time her chest tightened more, and the wild look on his face became fiercer.   He deepened their kiss once, his tongue almost forcing its way into her mouth, so she finally scooted over out of his reach, and he laughed when she did so.

There was a part of her that wanted to simply fall in his arms, have him take her to somewhere private, and finish what they had started the night before.  The emotion of desire, to be desired tempted her openly whenever Chategris put his furry lips to hers.   The emotion of desire was tempting enough that she returned each of his kisses without hesitation, if not passion, moving her lips gently against his.  The desire, however, was not physical at all.  In fact, it seemed to her as if her body had shut off, except for the tension in her rib cage.  It crept up her neck, so that it threatened to make her lips shake if she did not breathe slowly.  The contrast of emotion with the lack of the corresponding physical symptoms put her in a kind of trance, as if she were watching what was happening around her from outside of her body.  She wasn’t sure why she was scared of him this morning.  Perhaps it was the night before, where she had allowed herself to fall into an almost-intimacy with him.  Perhaps it was because she felt there would be more happiness at their reunion, when the happiness faded quickly into a turmoil of other more complicated emotions.  Perhaps it was because she was aware that none of her children were close by, and she was a human, alone, unable to do anything other than run if Chategris decided to do something to her.  Or perhaps, the thought occurred to her, it was because the Leader of the Grey Cats took what he wanted, like he did last night, and if he wanted to take anything more, there was nothing she could do stop him, and none of his people would come to her aid.  Yet here she was, playing doctor to whoever came to her.

She felt small, and weak, but not out of place.  It was an odd feeling, to have one without the other.  It reminded her of when she first went to college and began practice with the gymnastics team.  Many of the men and women on the team were of a higher caliber than her, and she knew of all of them, just as they knew of her.  She was a weak link in many of their routines, but she was not out of place on the team.  It was her team, and she was a part of it.  This must be how the omegas of the Grey Cats feel, she mused absently.

 _Go home_ , the unbidden thought told her.

She stopped what she was doing, the voice in her head was so unexpected.  It had the sound of a mother scolding her child who had been out playing too late, and she’d had to come find him to tell him it was time to come home.

 _Go home,_ it said again.

She turned to Chategris, the first time she’d done it that morning without having him prompt it, and said, “Is that everyone?”

He didn’t answer her question, he leaned forward on his knees, and kissed her.  He was purring loudly, from deep in his chest, the animalistic look still in his eyes.

“I think I will go home now,” she said when he pulled away.

“Comment?” (What?) he asked, his hazel eyes going wide in surprise.

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

She sat up straight, pulling her legs in front of her to stand up.  “I am going to go home now.”

Chategris looked at her as if she were crazy.  “You cannot go home,” he said in French.

“Why not?” she asked casually.  As soon as the words came out of her mouth, her chest clenched in fear.

“The Haunted Warehouse has been destroyed,” he said slowly, still in French. 

“We are at the warehouse next door,” she explained also in French, her own voice slow and slightly unsure.

“You will stay here,” Chategris said.  The purr was gone from his chest, and he showed his teeth when talked, his eyes becoming hooded once more.  He slid his hand behind her head, and drew her face close to his, “With me.”

 _Go home,_ the voice that as not her voice whispered to her, as if it had a body that was waiting for her with open arms at her home.

She looked straight into his hazel eyes, for a moment feeling nothing at all, either physically or emotionally.  It was as if she was watching a television set or a painting that was only his green-brown eyes, surrounded by white fur on one and gray on the other.  He kissed her again, this time his rough tongue brushing harshly against her lips.  When he pulled away, she said, her voice sounding far away to her own ears, “I am going to go home now.”

“Non,” he said sharply. 

The word seemed to knock reality back into her, bringing feeling back into her body and her heart with a whoosh that was almost audible to her.   She straightened and struggled to get up with his paw still holding the back of her head.  She had to duck and twist to free herself, and was afraid for a moment that he would try to take a fistful of her hair to keep her still.  “I,” she said, punctuating each word, her eyebrows drawing together in anger, “am going home now!”

A look of panic flashed on his face, but was quick as it appeared, it was gone, replaced with a slight curl of his lip.  He grabbed for her arm, but she moved out of his way too quickly for him to do so.  “You will stay here,” he spoke to her the way he spoke to Klashtooth or Razz when commanding them to do something they did not want to do, “where it is safe.”

She was suddenly aware that very few of the people around them spoke French, most of them her children, who were not here.  No one could tell what they were saying, they could only see their body language, and surmise the words.

“As I recall,” she said in as dignified a voice as she could muster, still in French, “it was Bunny who revealed that here I am the only one who is **not** safe!”

Chategris bared his teeth at her, and hissed slightly, “You will stay here.  It is I who takes care of you.”

“It is you who takes care of me?” she wasn’t sure she’d heard the words right.

“You have been safe these past ten years because of me,” he ground out.

“You do not take care of me,” she spat at him, the tightness in her chest becoming hot and moving to her cheeks.  “You do not keep me safe!  I have done just fine without you.  I did just fine without you all winter, and I did just fine without you for ten years before you came to **me** for help!”

The barb hit him, the cat mutant bared his teeth again.  In her mind, she dared him to growl at her, to see what she would do if he did.

He didn’t.

She turned, and walked toward the stairs.  She did not look back, her ears stinging with heat.   She could hear people talking as she walked away, their voices softly drifting down the stairs.  When she got to the bottom level, she met Aries coming from one of the side hallways with a guinea pig mutant woman at his side.  He held his shirt in his hands, and it was obvious from the disarray of his wool what he’d been up to the night before.

“You OK?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

She felt a wave of disgust well in her.  His voice was hoarse, did they come to the bottom floor so no one would hear them?  Shame at her own actions the night before quickly converged with the anger, feeding it.  “I am going home,” she said tightly.  “Have fun.”

“You can’t go home on your own,” Aries said.

Her eyes flashed, and the look on her face must have been a rare one, for Aries’ eyes went wide, and took an actual step back.  The girl at his side stepped slightly behind him, putting her hands on his upper arm as if to use it as a shield against his mother.  “I can go wherever I choose, whenever I choose, with whomever I choose.  I am going home, alone.”

Her son didn’t answer her, he only stared as she turned on her heel and walked out the front door of the building.

She stomped, her hands at her sides in fists, across the street, to an alleyway.  She put her hands to her cheeks, they burned.  She could feel with the sides of her hands that her lips were taut in an angry scowl, and she made an effort to relax.  Indignation made it difficult for her to do so.   How dare Chategris tell her what she could or could not do, where she could or could not go?  How dare Aries do the same thing?  Did she give the impression that she could be ordered around?  If so, she’d gone soft in her winter burrowed under the ground.

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought, soft and comforting.

I am going home, she retorted, irritation building at being told what to do by the voice that was not her voice as well as everyone else. 

She turned the corner, still seething, when the heat left her body completely, her blood running cold.  In the middle of the alley behind the building where she was walking, a round, Kraang flying scanner shined a sickening pick light across its path.  The light formed a tall line, seeming to move and wave as it contorted to the shapes in front of it. The line swept from side to side quickly, with a waving hum accompanying it.

She had a moment to breathe, but didn’t take it, when the scanner light hit her, blinding her so she saw nothing but pink.


	102. Chapter 102

Medusa shook her head at the proffered breakfast of a granola bar, but took the coffee that was offered.  It didn’t have milk in it, she liked it with milk, and sugar, but was used to drinking it black, just like everyone else.

“You aren’t going to eat?” Razz asked, opening his granola bar.

“I’ll catch something on the way home,” she said.  “A rat or a squirrel, or dog or cat, tastes better than that,” she curled her lip at the bar.  “That tastes like cardboard.”

“You eat dogs and cats?” Razz asked quietly.

Medusa gave him a sidelong glance.  Had she never told him what she ate?  Surely he knew what her mother served was nowhere near enough to satiate her appetite.  If she considered her full measure, she was the largest mutant she knew, it would take a lot of calories for someone of her size to keep healthy.  “If I find them, and they don’t have collars,” she said.

She had been fighting irritation all night.  Shots of ‘he-doesn’t-get-it’ would fly through her. The feeling of annoyance was punctuated by stabs of happiness, where her entire body, from her nose to her tail were warm.   She had stayed all night wrapped around him, and he’d had his arms about her, and his head on her chest.  She was no stranger to sleeping with someone, she slept with her mother and brothers all the time, but it was the first time she’d ever had anyone sleep on her chest.  Suddenly, the shirts that her mother made her wear took on a whole new meaning.  She couldn’t really say that he was sleeping on her breast, because she didn’t really have one, merely a swell of her sternum that might have indicated female-hood to someone.  But she’d grown up with a mammal, and Razz had been one once, and the significance of the gesture was not lost on her.

After Arcos, Crevan, Ghadira, Razz, and she had finished talking deep into the night, Razz and Medusa had turned their conversation to just each other.  His dewlap was still slightly extended, and seeing it made her thrillingly embarrassed.  She knew very well that she wasn’t beautiful by anyone’s standards, in fact the only person who had told her she was was her mother.  She was a snake with arms, even her eyes were all black, with no whites to them.  But seeing Razz gaze at her like he was, with a smile on his face, his dewlap slightly extending and then laying back on his neck as he breathed made her feel beautiful. 

“I missed you,” he had whispered, his face close to hers.

She remembered their kiss hours before, one made out of excitement and joy, and flicked her tongue out unknowingly.  It almost brushed his muzzle, she snapped it back in her mouth before it hit him.  He laughed.  “Sorry,” she apologized.

He shook his head, and leaned in a little closer.  “I don’t mind,” his voice was soothing and sweet.

She giggled reflexively, and felt foolish.  She raised her body, so her head was no longer level with his, breaking the spell of the moment before lowering her head again.  “It looks like you were lucky,” she said, “most of you survived.”

Razz nodded, “We did.  Chategris was amazingly strategic.”

“You mean you were?” she tried to give him credit where she thought it was due.

He shook his head, his extended dewlap shaking slightly.  “No, I helped with a few fights we had, when we were able to come across Kraang without them seeing us first.  And I came up with our strategies for here, but Chategris took care of everything else.”

“You mean he told everyone else what to do?” she asked.

“He came up with the ideas to tell everyone else what to do,” Razz said, smiling patronizingly.  “There is a reason why he’s the leader of the Grey Cats, you know.”

Medusa had never thought of the reason why Chategris had been their leader.  She had always assumed he had fought for the position, physically, much in the same way others of the gang fought for their positions in the hierarchy.   She had not considered that he actually might have the best ideas of the bunch.  “I guess so,” she said.

“You’ve turned pessimistic,” he noted.

The irascibility flared up then, “What do you think is going to happen when someone’s house is blown up by aliens, and they live in the sewer underground for months?” she snapped.   “We weren’t just under there sleeping, you know.”  How could he not know that they were struggling? 

“I never said you were,” he held his hands up defensively.

“We were hurt,” she continued.

Razz took her muzzle in his hands and said gently, “I know you were hurt.  All of us were hurt, all of us lost our home.”

Medusa flicked her tongue, scowling.  Why didn’t he get it?  “No, we were hurt,” her voice was a quiet hiss, as the memory of madness of the invasion came back to her.  “Arcos and Aries could barely walk when were done,” she said.  “My mother fell off of a five story building!”  A vision of them all dragging themselves through the sewers for days, despite having found a place to live almost immediately, due to the pain came to her.

Razz looked at a loss.  “I didn’t know…” He stroked her cheek, his eyes soft.

Then the annoyance left her.  The feel of his thumb on her muzzle felt good, the look in her eyes made her feel beautiful again.  Of course he didn’t know.  How was he to know, he had had his own trials.  “I missed you,” she hissed.

“I’m so glad,” he whispered, and licked his lips.

She giggled reflexively again.  She felt dumb twittering, but couldn’t seem to control doing it when it came upon her.  He leaned in, the front of his bony muzzle going into what would be his lizardy version of pucker, obviously to kiss her.  She darted her head back, and giggled again.

“What?” he asked, a dumb smile on his face.

“You can’t kiss me,” she said, as if it were obvious.

He frowned.  “Why not?”

She looked around, with Crevan, Arcos, and Ghadira in conversation with each other.  “Because there are people around,” she whispered harshly.

“So?”  He looked confused.

The annoyance came back.  While her first kiss might have been born out of excitement, her first real kiss was not going to be on display for her brother and friends to see.  Was he such a caveman that he didn’t know that?  “Because, we aren’t alone.”

The anole got a cheeky look on his face, “Ah,” he drawled, waggling his eye ridges, his dewlap extending almost fully.

Again the annoyance evaporated.   She twittered again, “No,” she swatted him playfully.  “That’s not what I mean.”

“It’s what I mean,” he snuggled up closer to her and she clicked her tongue.

“Put that away,” she sang, pointing to his dewlap, and he laughed.  But it made her feel nice.  He’d never expressed this kind of interest in her before, not to suggest something like this, even on the gentle level with which he was doing so.  His dewlap was nice and pink, surrounded by white, before the light green of the rest of his scales.  “Why did you end up going to Staten Island?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

“After a week, the beach was crawling with Kraangdroids.  There wasn’t any way we could stay there.  It was pretty safe for the week, though,” he shrugged.  “There were lots of nooks and crannies to hide in.  We ate a lot of seafood.”

She chuckled.  “How did you get seafood?”

“We fished,” Razz answered, mocking offense.

“You know how to fish?” Medusa was incredulous.

“I do now,” he said.   “We fished when we were on the Island too.”

“We saw you had tents,” she said.

“You went there?” he asked surprised.

“Yes,” she hissed the word out gently.  “We were trying to find you.”  She looked hurt, she felt hurt.  Why was it a surprise that they would go looking for them.  “You’re our friends.”  She felt a sudden stab, remembering what seemed long ago, when the Battle of the Pretty Building took place, and her mother had explained the difference between being the Grey Cats’ friend, and the Grey Cats not being theirs. 

“Of course we’re friends,” he said, still looking confused.  Then, his face softened, and took a quick breath in.  “I want to remember every scale on your face,” he said, he put his hand back onto her muzzle, and his fingers flittered across her cheek.

Medusa’s breath caught in her throat, and she closed her inner lid halfway.  The color of his scales was such a lovely green, light and bright, like a sweet potato vine.  His black eyes were shiny and not having an inner eyelid, his eyes shined at the sides too.  His dewlap was an exquisite pale pink, getting darker and darker as the night wore on.  She flicked her tongue out and smelled him so close to her.

He stood up, and offered her his hand.   “Medusa and I are going to sleep,” he turned his long neck toward the three on the other side of the cubicle. 

Arcos looked at Medusa and nodded, before turning back to Crevan.  Medusa took Razz’s hand, it would have been a gesture to help her up if she’d not been a snake.  She looked back, and little anxiously, but Arcos was already continuing his conversation with the silver fox once again, Ghadira leaning against him once again.  She slithered slowly with her hand in Razz’s, feeling more twittery with each wave of her body.  She shouldn’t feel nervous, she’d been alone with him in his room before.  Why would this be any different?  He led her to a cubicle set up like a room, with a sheet on a curtain rod for a door. 

“You have a bed!” she exclaimed, surprised.

He laughed and let go of her hand, “There are benefits to being only two rungs down from Chategris.”  She took a breath in, annoyed at him laughing at her, her tongue flicking in and out rapidly.  He sat on the bed, and patted the spot next to him.  “Are you tired?”

She felt a surge of affection for him, drowning the irritation, and nodded her head.  “A little,” she said, settling herself down next to him, as if she had a body with legs, her body in a ‘u’.

“You can’t sleep sitting up, can you?” he asked.

Again, a wave of touchiness came upon her, covering the warmth of only a moment before.  And again, it was replaced by fondness when he patted the pillow on the bed.  “Lay down.”  The gesture was a caretaking one, and the look on his face was still soft and sweet, and his dewlap flared again slightly.

She curled her body up on the bed, there was no way she’d be able to fit all of herself on it, it was only a twin.  But, she could configure herself in such a way that her tail draped off of the end, and she rested her shoulder blades on the pillow. 

Razz chuckled, and leaned in closer to her, his dewlap did not return to his throat, but extended a little more.  “You’re supposed to put your head on the pillow,” he said gently.

She felt the heat rise in her cheeks, “There is not enough room for me to put my head on the pillow.”

He brought his finger to the tip of her chin, and licked his lip again.  She knew what he was going to do, and she a moment to stop him, if she wanted to, in the pause between one move and the next.  He leaned in, and touched his mouth to hers again, and left it there.

Medusa had learned very early on that she couldn’t pucker properly, not the way her mother and brothers could.  She simply couldn’t extend her lips that far to the front of her muzzle.  It wasn’t something that she thought about much, as her mother’s expressive human mouth more than made up it when she received her kisses.  This kiss, however, was something altogether different.  As their lips laid against each other, she could feel the bone under his skin and muscle, his own pucker an approximation, just like hers.  He tried to open his mouth, but when he did, that broke the kiss, because he didn’t have enough of a ‘lip’ to work with, so he closed it again, still against the tip of her mouth, with his finger resting on her chin.

She slipped her arms around his long neck, and felt his dewlap press against her.  A thrill went down her body at the feeling of the soft skin, knowing it was probably red and no longer pink, pressing against her throat.

He took that as encouragement, and moved his hand from her chin to the edge of her fitted t-shirt, and began to slide his hand underneath it.  The thrill went away, replaced by bother and fear.  She darted her hand to his arm, much in the same way she darted her entire body when fighting, and the anole stopped the movement dead in its tracks.

She pulled away from him, smiling at him knowingly.  “It’s late,” she said. 

He smiled back, and lowered himself so that his head rested gently on her chest, using it in place of the pillow.

The fear disappeared and the bother surged to annoyance again.  She had just stopped his bold move at her waist, and now he was laying on her non-existent breast.

“I missed you so much,” he said, the emotion in his voice like nothing she’d ever heard from him before.

Her crossness disappeared, and her heart squeezed, right where his earless heat was resting on it.  She wrapped her arms about him again, and laid her head on top of his.  “I missed you, too.”

He wrapped his tail about her, at the middle of her body where nothing intimate was positioned, but the intimate action of the wrap itself was enough to fill the snake mutant with a warm tingle all through her body.

And that is how they’d slept, she’d been pleased, until he asked his hesitant question about her diet.

Her memory stopped short, and the annoyance from his disgust at her diet reared again.   “Don’t you eat bugs and flies?”  Her tone was condescending.

“No,” he said, his voice rising as he spoke.  “I eat granola bars,” he held up his bar.

“I don’t,” she said simply.  “I eat rats, and squirrels, and dogs, and cats, and raccoons, and opossums, and whatever else smells like it tastes good.”

“There won’t be any around here,” Razz said, a confused look on his face.  “Everything is mutated.”

“Then I’ll eat a mutated one.”

“You can’t eat a mutated one,” he said.

She looked him warily, as if she were sizing up prey.  “Why not?” she asked, sounding a great deal like the Phoenix, rather than one of her children.

“Because…it’s mutated,” he said, his face distressed.  “You don’t want to eat mutated stuff.  That’s…gross.”

“What I eat is gross?” she asked, putting a hand on where her hip would be.

“No,” he put his hands up, and backed away a step, realizing he’d gone too far.   He shook his head, his eyes darting from side to side.  “I just don’t want you getting sick eating mutated stuff,” he said quickly.

She looked at him dubiously.   “What do you think I was eating in the sewer all winter?” she asked in a hiss.  “We weren’t at the beach to catch fish.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Medusa,” he said, putting down the granola bar.

“Then don’t judge my food.”

 


	103. Chapter 103

Arcos had been surprised by Crevan and Ghadira’s account of their lives since the invasion began.  He hadn’t thought that Chategris had it in him to lead his people the way he did in a crisis.  He had always thought of him as a type of tyrant, who had able bodied people underneath him to do his bidding, not that he was capable of being able bodied himself.  Razz, Crevan, and Ghadira spoke of him with a sort of awe that Arcos did not remember being their voices before the invasion.  Apparently he’d performed admirably, keeping his people alive, fed, and sheltered.  His decisions seemed to be the right ones for the situations they had found themselves in.   It put the Leader of the Grey Cats in an entirely new light.

Not an entirely good one, either.  One of the decisions he had made was to take almost two weeks to come and see if The Phoenix and her children were alright.  He would have known they could not still be at the Haunted Warehouse.  If the Cargo Bay had been overrun, then the warehouse would have been too.   It had taken him two days to get to the beach, and then took another eight to get settled before a scouting team could be sent to the Cargo Bay to retrieve their weapons and the Haunted Warehouse to check on their friends.

Their friends, Arcos had to keep from snorting out of irritation as he sipped his coffee in the morning.  It came out as a sniff, and Ghadira, at his side, smiled at the huff.

He had been looking so forward to seeing the Grey Cats.  He missed them, more than he thought he would before he was separated from them.   He missed the camaraderie.  He had spent the night talking to Crevan and Ghadira, they telling him about their adventures, of living at the beach and fishing, of swimming across the straight to get to Staten Island, holding on to anything that was floating so that Chategris would not lose any more people.  They told him of gathering tents from a local camping store, and finding the glade in the park.  They told him of the fight with the crustacean mutants, and they laughed when he told them about their own encounter. 

“Meaner than they look, aren’t they?” Ghadria asked. 

“They taste like seafood,” Arcos muttered.

“That’s what Chategris said,” both Crevan and Ghadira chanted.

Arcos also told them of their adventures in the sewer, of gathering items, of making things, of preparing the water filters.  He told them of their fights with the Kraang, comparing notes on fighting techniques.  He told them of finding Splinter, but he stopped short of telling them how involved his mother had been with his care.  Instead he told of the times when all of them had cared for the rat, of how refined the man had been, how he and Aries had found him the delicate, flowery teacup for his green tea, how he moved and made no sound whatsoever when he did so, even to Medusa’s sensitive ears.  He told them of finding the Inleters, and how they’d come down to the sewer with nothing, and helping them to get set up.

 “Compared to us, you had a boring winter,” Ghadira noted.  She was leaning against him slightly, she had traded off using Arcos and Crevan as pillows during the night.  Arcos had done nothing more than put his arm about her, as he would with anyone he was sleeping with, he’d have done it to Crevan if the fox had been up against him.  Ghadira had made it quite clear what she would like the hands at the ends of his arms to be doing, but he didn’t indulge.  He suspected that when he did not give Ghadira the kind of attention she desired, she tried Crevan, only to be spurned by the desire for sleep.  Apparently Crevan was not in the mood to indulge either.  Having the bear’s arm around her shoulders was better than rejection outright for Mr. Sandman.  She probably thought if she played her cards right, she’d have a chance with Arcos, and little boost in prestige to boot.  Arcos didn’t like playing games, and he hadn’t played them for a long time.  He wasn’t about to start now, just because a pretty woman was leaning against him, trying to make ‘friends’.

Their friends, he thought, had taken eight days to get settled?  It hadn’t taken him and his family eight days to get settled, and they were in the sewer, hurt, with a two people completely out for the count, an unconscious rat and whoever was watching him at the time, usually his mother.  They had an empty room, with no food, no water, no nothing.  They were settled enough in less than eight days to go out and look for someone.

But they hadn’t gone out to look for anyone.  They could have just as easily searched the city to try and find the Grey Cats, but they hadn’t.  It was the early part of the invasion, Arcos told himself, there were Kraang everywhere.  We had no idea where to look.

But the Grey Cats didn’t have any idea where to look either.

We went to the Cargo Bay first thing, Arcos argued with himself.  They took ten days to get to the Haunted Warehouse.  That was enough of a difference in his mind.

He took a bite of the granola bar, and wondered where Aries was. He hadn’t seen him all night, in fact, he hadn’t seen him since they’d come upstairs.  Had he even come upstairs with them?

Crevan returned to the little cubicle a pot of coffee in his hand.  He looked at Arcos and chuckled.  “You will never guess the buzz that is going around the floor.”  He poured some in each of Arcos and Ghadira’s cups.

“We have something other than granola bars for breakfast?” Ghadira asked, hopefully.

“Somebody jumped out of the upper story windows?” Arcos asked dryly.

Crevan laughed, and pointed at him, “Very funny.”  He shook his head, “Word has it that you’re mother slept with Chategris last night.”

Arcos spit coffee across the cubicle room in a spray.

“What?” he growled.

Crevan laughed outright.  “You heard me, big brother.  Chategris finally got his way.”

The bear stood up, Ghadira scooted away from him slightly.  “I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t believe it happened, or you don’t believe that’s the buzz going around?” Crevan asked.

“You’re joking,” Arcos tried.

Crevan shook his head.  “Nope.”  The bear walked past him, and the fox turned to follow.  “Hey, where are you going?”

“To talk to my mother,” he said.

Crevan tried to jog to keep up with the larger mutant without spilling the coffee in the pot.  Someone came by and took it and began pouring it into their own cup.  “What’s the matter?”

Arcos didn’t answer him.  As he passed by a series of cubicles by the wall, he heard Medusa’s voice, “Don’t judge my food.”  He thought in the back of his mind as he walked, why would someone judge the food someone ate?  It’s food.  Food is good.  And Medusa was amazingly self-sufficient when it came to food.  One didn’t have to worry about feeding her at all.

He turned the corner, and stopped, realizing he didn’t know where to go.  Crevan ran into his arm at his stopping so quick.  The bear looked down at the fox.  “Where is my mother?”

“With Chategris,” Crevan replied.

Arcos have him a dry look.   “Where is Chategris?”

Crevan then took the lead, walking quickly in front of Arcos, and wending them through several halls made of cubicle walls, before arriving at the cubicle unit that was currently housing Chategris.

The gray cat was holding an apple in one hand, and cup of coffee in the other.  He took a bite from the already half eaten apple, and then looked up from where he was lounging on a gather of cushions.  His hazel eyes looked at the bear questioningly as he chewed.

“Where’s my mother?” Arcos said, looking around the cubicle and not seeing her.

Chategris waved his hand, his mouth full of food, and Klashtooth answered for him, “She left.”

“She what?” Arcos turned his attention to Klashtooth, also lounging on the floor.

“She left,” he said again.

 “Why did she leave?” Arcos demanded.

Klashtooth’s dark brown eyes on the sides of his head were wide open, he opened his mouth answer, but Chategris answered instead.  “She was done with her patients,” he said in French, “and obviously saw no reason to stay.”

“Where did she go?” Arcos asked slowly in English.  Something wasn’t adding up in his mind.  Chategris was being too calm, too dismissive.

“She said she was going home,” Chategris replied, still in French, a smug smile on his face.

“By herself?” Arcos asked in English.

“Oui,” said Chategris.  He took a sip of coffee, and then set the mug down next to him.  “Sit,” he gestured to the cushions all about the room.  “Eat breakfast.”  He took a bowl that was next to him, “We have fruit.”

Klashtook and Crevan were looking from one to the other of them, both had confused looks on their faces. 

Arcos surmised that understanding only half of the conversation must be frustrating.  “I already ate,” he said, even though the granola bar had done absolutely nothing to quell his appetite.  He reached out and grabbed a pear, despite his previous words.  “Where did you get fruit?”

“The EPF keeps their people well fed,” Klashtooth said with a wink.

“All we can manage to get are MREs,” Arcos said, and then took a bite of pear.

“Brute strength cannot solve everything,” Chategris continued speaking in French.  “Surely your mother has told you that.”

“My mother has told me many things,” Arcos answered.  “But she isn’t here to tell me why she left.  You are.”

“You think I know?”

Arcos turned at the sound of someone stomping toward them.  He saw his brother, his shirt off and in his hands, his wool in disarray.  The ram’s nostrils were flared, and his horizontal pupils were slits.  “What did you do to my mother?” he demanded at Chategris.

Chategris sighed, as if he was being asked to do something that took a great amount of energy.  He picked up the coffee mug, and took another long sip.  “I did not do anything to your mother,” he said smoothly in French.  “Perhaps that is why she left.”

Aries huffed, and made a move to come forward to the leader of the Grey Cats, but Arcos put his hand on his brother’s chest.  Chategris sprang up, his teeth bared, his tongue curled in an almost hiss.  “Stop it,” Arcos said, finally speaking in French.  “Both of you.”

Aries glanced at him surprised for a moment, before turning back to Chategris, and in French said, “She just stormed out of here, you did something!”

“She left because she doesn’t have any sense,” Chategris replied, his smooth demeanor gone. 

“You let her go by herself?” Arcos asked.

“I am not her keeper, and if he just saw her storm out,” he waved his hand toward Aries, “then it would appear that he let her leave by herself also.”

Arcos turned on his brother, “Why’d you let her leave?”

“Why did I let her leave?” Aries brows came together in anger, “Have you ever tried to stop her from doing something?”

Arcos turned back to Chategris, his ire rising.  He saw the cat’s eyes flash to Klashtooth, and thought for a moment that he was going to be attacked.  He wasn’t sure, in retrospect, why he’d thought that, but his body tensed, and he bent his legs slightly to pounce.  But Klashtooth came over to him, smiling with his two large front teeth showing, and clapped him on the shoulder before walking by him, out of the cubicle.  Arcos blinked in confusion.

At the same time, Bunny came up to Aries, and ran her fingers through the wool on his bare chest, and clicked her tongue.  “Are you all upset because Myra spent the night up here and you didn’t?”  The ram’s reaction was similar to his brother’s.   “You have to give her a chance to break up with Pedro,” she said.  “We all know that Aries, son of the Phoenix doesn’t take another man’s woman.”  The ram blinked at her, it was obvious the cogs in his mind were turning to think what was wrong with this picture, but he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was.

Chategris came up to Arcos, he had a large sheet of beef jerky.  “You’re tired,” he said, his expression serious and concerned.  “You are hungry.  You are lonely.  You are worried about your loved ones.”  He handed the jerky to the bear, and put his on his shoulder, and rubbed it slightly.  “Eat.”  His voice was encouraging.

Arcos, before he quite knew what he was doing, tore a chunk off of the jerky, almost drooling with the taste of the cured meat.  It tasted like manna from heaven compared to what they’d been eating—rice and eggs, eggs and rice and whatever greenery they could find, and MREs.

“Your Maman,” Chategris was speaking in French, had he been speaking in French the entire time?  ”She is a woman of her own mind.  You know this.  She forgets she is only a little human.”

At the mention of his mother, Arcos said, “You need to stop the rumors running around,” he almost spit, his mouth was so watery.

“What rumors?” Aries asked in English.  Bunny was still at his side, stroking his arm soothingly

“What rumors?” Chategris asked in French.  Crevan had come to stand beside Arcos, close so that their arms were almost touching. 

“That my mother slept with you last night,” Arcos answered, his voice sounding confused and far away to his own ears.

“She did sleep with me last night,” Chategris smiled smugly, and shook his head.

“What?” Aries took a step forward, the confusion gone from his face.  Bunny held onto his arm, and looked at Chategris worriedly.

The Leader of the Grey Cats chuckled, and put his hand out to stroke Aries arm, just above where Bunny was holding it.  “All night, in my arms.”  His voice was congenial.  “It is the safest she has been for almost half a year.”

Both boys were silent, except for Arcos chewing the jerky, and looked at the gray cat in front of them.  Bunny still had Aries by his tricept, she was stroking it gently, her fingers going in and out of the wool. 

“What’s the matter, Big Brother?”  Crevan asked Arcos.  “We’re your friends.  Why are you mad?”

Why was he mad?  He wasn’t sure…these were his friends.  They had come to look for them after they’d gotten settled.  They had received them, when they found them, with open arms, sharing their provisions and their companionship.  His mother had slept in Chategris’ arms, and he was right.  It was the safest she’d been in months.  There were no ninjas here, the aliens left them alone, and the scanners did not detect them.  The Grey Cats had made this place comfortable, and they were comforting.

Arcos shook his head, and swallowed the jerky.  “I don’t know,” he shrugged.

“You are uptight with worry,” Chategris said still French.  “Calm down, eat.  Your mother is a capable woman.  She will get some supplies, and then she will back.”  He said this with confidence.  Is that why his mother had left to go home?  He didn’t know that…

“Aries!”  Both boys turned to see Myra, her golden ears, like long hair, trailing behind her as she ran.  “Oh, I missed you, I missed you!”  Bunny did not let go of Aries arm until Myra threw her arms about the ram, and pressed her lips to him passionately.  He stood still for a moment, a confused look on his face, before he returned her kiss with the same passion she gave it.

Arcos took another bite of his jerky.  These were his friends, and they were safe here.

 


	104. Chapter 104

The Phoenix waited for the splash of the mutagen ooze to stick to her, for the pain that those who had told her about their transformation had described.  She felt nothing.  Opening her eyes, she sucked in a breath, she didn’t know she was holding it until just that moment, and could hear only her heart beating in her ears.  She was shaking, so hard that the world around her vibrated slightly, and she sank down her knees to keep from collapsing.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened.  As the pink faded from her eyes, and she opened them, to see the drone pass by her as if she wasn’t there.  Why hadn’t it splatted her?  Had it malfunctioned?

 _Go home_ , said the unbidden thought, soft and sweet in her mind.

I have to get ahold of myself first, she told it.  The sound of her heart seemed to have two beats to it, going at two different rates.  The quick one, which whooshed in her ears matched the pressure in her head and fingers as it thrummed through her body.  The second beat, slower and steady, seemed to come from outside of her ears.  Then, she noticed the familiar hum that came along with the beat, as around the corner a formation of Kraangdroids marched in the same path that the drone had passed moments before.  The Kraangdroid in the front had one a backpacked that was filled with an unmistakable teal swirling liquid, attached to a gun that it was holding.

That was why the drone hadn’t splatted her.

The Kraangdroid in front stopped in his tracks, the others behind him following suit.  “It is one who is called a human.  Why did the drone not notify Kraang?”

“This human is the human known as The Phoenix,” said another, raising its gun and pointing it toward her.  “The Phoenix is also one of the ones who is known as Not-The-One.”

“The one known as The Phoenix is to be exterminated,” said a third.

She was in the middle of their path, and felt as if a spotlight were shining down on her.   While they were talking, everything except their voices seemed to move in slow motion.  Or was it her mind that was moving too quick?  There were seven of them, with the one carrying the mutagen at the apex of a triangle.   The one carrying the mutagen did not have a laser.  She heard the high pitched squeal of the guns firing up after the word ‘exterminated’ hit her ears. 

 _Move!_ The unbidden thought yelled in her head so loud, that it drowned out the hum and her heartbeat.

She rolled to the right, just as six lasers hit the spot where she had been kneeling.  As she came up, she let off a series of quick shots with her sling, hitting one of the Kraangdroids in the head.  It sparked as the crimped bullet shells hit one of its eye sockets, another its cheek, and a third its mouth piece.  It let out an unintelligible garble before falling to the ground.  The Kraang inside of it popped out and slithered away.

She had to leap about of the way at her place near the wall of a building, shots from the Kraang’s guns following her as she bounced about the alley like a jumping bean.  She finally was able to catch a space where she was able to set off another shot, hitting a Kraang in the midsection, causing its droid to fall flat, a puddle of pink goo underneath it.

The six Kraangdroids with guns advanced, walking around the mutagen droid, who simply stood still as if none of this had anything to do with it.  Phoenix finally made it to a corner, and ducked behind it, bolting a run to gain as much distance between her and her attackers as she could. 

Half way down the alleyway, before it dead ended with a building, was the drone that had passed her by.  It turned, and scanned again, and despite her attempt to duck out of the way, the pink light hit her again.  She waited for a barrage of lasers to fire at her, just as they did with the drones near her home, but again, nothing happened. 

The droids came around the corner, and in desperation, she turned from the drone and began to fire at the remaining four droids.  She hit them, but in places where the damage was inconsequential.  She finally had to stop firing and leap about again avoiding gun fire.

Still, the drone did nothing.  It really did not detect her.  But it was looking for things that had not come in contact with the mutagen, wasn’t it?  Then how had it not seen her?

As she strafed and jumped, she realized she’d moved too far back in the alley, she was at the dead end, and each side had a corner.  The alleys that lead away from this one were now in front of her, with the Kraangdroids press forward on her.  

Then, she heard a cry come from above her, in a warbley voice, drawn out, “Phoeeeennnnniiiiix!”  Then, a body fell out of the sky on one of the Kraangdroids in the back of the formation.  The droid fell to the ground, its gun firing, and hitting the Kraangdroid in front of it.

A head popped up and blinked its wobbly eyes on the sides of its head.  “Phoenix!” the warbly voice said again.

“Pete!”  She felt a rush of relief run through her, but it was quickly dashed as one of the Kraangdroids fired at her, and the remaining one turned to Pete.

She fired her sling, but missed, and having nowhere to avoid the lasers, she had to roll toward the Kraangdroid.  She popped up in front of it, drawing her knife as she did, and slashed for all she was worth.  She hit metal, her hand jarring at the impact.

The Kraangdroid, which could not position its gun close enough to shoot her, took the weapon and used it as a club.  It swung the gun, hitting her in the arm, and sending her sprawling.

Pete seemed to be a flurry of arms and feather on top of the Kraangdroid that had turned its attention to him.  Laser fire went in all directions, as the pigeon mutant let out a kind of squawky scream.

One of the lasers hit the Kraangdroid that was now aiming at Phoenix, going through its chest.  The droid fell backwards, the Kraang inside of it lying still with its eyes closed.

Still having to dodge laser fire from the random shots of the Kraangdroid engaged with Pete, she ran toward the two of them, knife still in hand.  She managed to jump on the back of the Kraang as it and Pete spun in a kind of strange dance, and stabbed it in the neck where some wiring was showing.  It sparked, and fell while she was still on it.

“Phoenix!” exclaimed Pete again, helping her up from the ground.

“Oh, Pete!”  As soon as she was on her feet, her reached up, and took the pigeon’s face in her hands and kissed the side of his beak.  “You’re alive!”

“I am alive,” he said proudly.  “And did you see me take out that Kraangdroid?”

Kraangdroid?  She’d never heard that term before, but it made sense.  It was a Kraang, and it was a android.  “I did,” she said, smiling. 

“I’ve toughened up a lot since the last time you saw me,” he told her.

“I can see,” she assured him, still smiling.  “But shouldn’t we get out of the open?”

Pete nodded, “Oh yes,” he said, quite confidently.  “Come with me, I know where you will be safe.”

She tried not to be annoyed.  “Do I give the impression that I cannot keep myself safe?”

The pigeon looked at her like she was crazy, and shook his head.  “No,” he said.  “But we can’t stay out here.  We have to stay hidden.”  He leaned in close to her and whispered loudly, “I’m a spy.”

“A spy?” she asked incredulously.  Pete being a spy was like keeping something safe in a glass container amongst falling rocks.

“Yeah,” he motioned for her to follow him, “I’ll take you home.”

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

“I can go home on my own,” she said, suddenly not wanting Pete to know where she lived.  She did not share that location with anyone, despite that the Grey Cats knew, and whoever they told.  But no one knew they were back there, and her mirror image home was there, her wedding set was there, garden was there, the remains of her children were there…

“No,” Pete laughed.  “My home.”

“Your home?” she sounded like an idiot, repeating the word home over and over.  Was he going to take her to a rooftop with a bunch of pigeons?  “With your pigeons?”

“No,” he grabbed her arm, and began to lead her down the alleyway.  “My home with my team.  It isn’t far from here.”

As they were walking, he told her, “Everyone will be so happy to see you!”

“Who is everyone?” she asked.

“You’ll see!”  He laughed, knowing a secret to which she was not privy.

He held the back door to a building open for her, leading downstairs into the basement.  It was dark, and the light that came in through the open door disappeared as Pete came in behind her and shut it.  “Pete?” she turned, and saw that the pigeon was gone.  Her heart jumped to her throat and she whipped back around to face the open basement.  She drew her knife, and slowly began to descend the stairs.  “Pete,” she drawled, “this isn’t funny.”

“Well, I’ll be dipped in mutagen,” said a familiar voice at the other end of the basement.  A light came on, and an older gentleman in a fedora hat stood behind a metal desk.  “The Phoenix!”

“Jack Kurtzman!”  Phoenix ran to the man, sheathing her knife as she did, and stopped just in time to throw her arms about him.  “You’re alive!”  She jumped up and kissed him on his cheek.  It was stubbly, and being so close to it, she could see his whiskers, gray and white, beginning to grow, as if he hadn’t shaved that morning.  The look on his face was utter shock as he brought his arms around her in an awkward hug.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, “I haven’t heard hide nor hair of you.”

She stepped back so she could look up at him, and regain some personal space, now that their hug was over.  But before she could say anything, she heard a gravelly voice behind her, “We looked for you, but you’d disappeared.”

She twirled around, and out of the shadows came the large, spiky silhouette of a tortoise.  “Slash!” she exclaimed, running away from Kurtzman and the desk, and throwing her arms about the mutant.  She jumped up to indicate that she would give him a kiss, but he did not bend down to receive it, so she took his hand, and kissed the back of it.  He snatched it back quickly, and held it up as if she’d wiped her nose on it, and now did not know what to do with snot.

She laughed, “We’ve been keeping a low profile.”

“Where are your kids?” Kurtzman asked. 

She turned back around to face him, and opened her mouth to answer, but another voice overtook her before she could.

“They are in the Tuggler-Craig Center building,” said a posh British accent.  Turning toward it, a few strands of her hair fell out of her hair sticks, and she saw a chimpanzee with a helmet floating toward her.  It was misshapen for a chimp, its head was too big, and its limbs too small.  It could speak, which mean it was a mutant.

“This is Dr. Rockwell,” Kurtzman gestured toward the chimp mutant.

Phoenix nodded to him, “Hello, Dr. Rockwell.”  She held out her hand, “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Indeed,” he said, floating over to her, and taking her hand in his to shake it.  “The pleasure is all mine.  I have heard about the woman who performs magic to heal mutants.”

His tone was off putting, and the actual words were even more so.  “It isn’t magic, Dr. Rockwell,” she said, schooling her tone to make it gentle.  “I can assure you of that.”

“And this,” Kurtzman gestured to another part of the basement.  “Is Leatherhead.”

Out of the shadows came a giant crocodile mutant.  She was shocked at the size of him, he was bigger than Arcos!  “Hello, Leatherhead,” she put her hand out. 

“Hello,” he said slowly, in an unsure voice.  It was endearing, as if he didn’t know what to say.  He took her hand, engulfing it almost up to her elbow, and gave it two gentle shakes.

“This is my team,” Slash said, smiling.  She smiled back knowingly, remembering what seemed ages ago, when he didn’t need anyone.  “The Mighty Mutanimals.”

Phoenix nodded approvingly, and repeated.  “The Mighty Mutanimals.”  Then she turned back to Kurtzman.  “I see you’ve all been staying safe.”

“I tried to find you,” Kurtzman repeated Slash’s words, “and some of the other mutants I know who are fighting the Kraang.  These fighters,” he gestured again to the four mutants around them, “are who I found, and who were up for the job of Kraang-bashers.”

“We can always use more Kraang-bashers,” Phoenix replied.  “Pete and I just bashed a few ourselves, didn’t we Pete?”

The pigeon came forward, and nodded vigorously.  “The Kraang were out with one of their scanners looking for humans,” he said.  “But the scanner didn’t register when it saw her,” he pointed to Phoenix.

He’d seen that?  How long had he been watching before he fell out of the sky?

“I can see that,” Kurtzman said casually, walking back behind his desk.  “You probably have enough Kraang DNA in your make up that the probe didn’t pick you up.”

 


	105. Chapter 105

“What?!” Phoenix leaned forward, her eyes wide.  Surely she hadn’t heard the investigator correctly. 

Kurtzman looked surprised at her outburst, and started, his blue eyes wide, backing up slightly.  “I said, you probably have enough Kraang DNA in your make up that the probe didn’t detect you.”

“What Kraang DNA in my make up?” she yelled.

“Shhhh,” Pete put one of his human fingers to his beak.  “They’ll hear you.”

She snapped her head to Pete, and then back to Kurtzman.  “What Kraang DNA?” she whispered harshly.  She could feel the tension in the room rise along with her temper.

“Your Kraang DNA,” Kurtzman said slowly, as if talking to a wild animal.

“I don’t have any Kraang DNA,” she said.  “I’m a plain, ordinary human.”

There was a moment of silence, laden with dread, and she knew what he was going to say before Kurtzman replied, “You are hardly ordinary.”  As if to add insult to injury, he continued, “You don’t think everyone can go around healing people, do you?”

She shook her head, “That doesn’t have anything to do with my DNA,” her voice was emphatic, “I’ve only been able to do that since Ailurosa—“ she stopped short at the sound of her dead daughter’s name.

“What’s Ailurosa?” Kurtzman asked.

He didn’t know about Ailurosa.  She recalled he did not know about Aetos either.  He didn’t know about the man in the funny hat outside of the Asian store, or the great firebird that he had called down to engulf her.  “I’ve only been able to do that for about six years,” she explained, trying to be calm.

“You been healing mutants for ten years,” he said, as if he knew more of her actions than she did.  “And you were healing transient humans before that.”

“I did that with herbs,” she shook her head, her eyebrows drawing together.  “I didn’t do that with,” she didn’t even know what to call it out loud, so she put her hands in the hair and waved them slightly.

Kurtzman looked at her doubtfully.  “When was the last time you got sick?” he asked.

Phoenix opened her mouth, sure a reply would be on the tip of her tongue, but there wasn’t one.

“How often were you sick as a kid?”

“I was sick all the time as a kid,” she said.  “Just like other kids.”

“Did you get the chicken pox?”

She thought for a moment.  “No.”

“Did you get the measles?”  He paused, and she didn’t answer, “The mumps?  The flu?  The common cold?  How many days of school did you miss because you were sick.”

“Mr. Kurtzman,” she said, beginning to get angry again, “that was a long time ago, you can’t expect me to remember—“

“—that you were never sick as child?” he interrupted.  “Think.  Tell me one time you were ill.  Ever.”

She stared at him, her mind going blank.  I’ve been sick, she thought.  Everyone gets sick.  She couldn’t bring a single illness to mind.  Every time she’d been laid up, it had been from a physical injury, not from an illness

“How many doctors have told you that your sports injuries healed with an amazing speed, at the top of the scale?” he asked, as if he could sense her train of thought.

“Lots of athletes heal quickly,” she retorted.  “That’s a scientific fact.  It’s because they’re in good shape.”

“They didn’t heal as fast as you,” Kurtzman leaned on the desk, so they were looking eye to eye.

Phoenix felt her face twisting into despair.  She shook her head again, as if doing so would negate his words.

“Why do you think the Kraang kidnapped you?” Kurtzman asked.

She shook her head again, and backed away from the desk.  “I don’t know,” her voice sounded small and timid.

“The Kraang have been manipulating human DNA for millennia,” Kurtzman looked at her with pity.  “They were trying to find a compatible DNA strand with their own, so they could survive on Earth.  They had several families all throughout the world that they were concentrating on, trying to perfect the combination.”  He stood back up, “Your mother’s family was one of them.”

Phoenix felt as if she’d been hit in the chest with a baseball.  She stumbled backward, and fell into Pete, who put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. 

“I thought you knew…” Kurtzman voice sounded truly sorry.

“That I knew?” she felt her anger flare up again.  “How was I supposed to know that?”

“Shhh,” Pete said again behind her.

“I thought that was why you stayed with your children,” Kurtzman said, a confused look now on his face.  “Because you knew that you were a mutant…” his voice trailed off.

She shook her head again, beginning to get dizzy from the shaking of it, and sank down to the ground on her knees.  She was keenly aware of the five of them looking down on her at the floor, but she wasn’t sure if her legs would be able to hold her up for much longer.

“Then why,” Kurtzman paused, “why did you stay to take care of Arcos, Aries, and Medusa?”

She looked up at him, and felt despondent.  Tears sprang to her eyes and overflowed, before she even had a chance to blink, the warmth of the water was a stark contrast to the cool dark of the basement.  “Because I was already dead,” she told him.  “I stayed because I was already dead.”  She leaned forward, bringing her hands to her face, and her face to her knees, and let out a small sob.

She couldn’t hear anything for a moment, except for her own soft crying.  Then she felt a hand on her back, and heard Pete say, “It’s alright, Phoenix.  Being a mutant isn’t all bad.”

She sat up, and laughed through her tears at the statement.  “Oh, Pete,” she felt shame welling up inside of her.  How spoiled she must look to these people.  “Being a mutant isn’t bad at all.  Being a mutant is perfectly fine.”  The laugh ended and twisted into a little sob.  “It isn’t that.  It’s just that I thought—“ she stopped in midsentence.  It sounded ridiculous now that she was forming it into words.

“That hearing voices and having visions made you special?” Dr. Rockwell asked, his tone slightly condescending. 

She looked at him in horror.  “Wha-?” was all she get out.

“That is what usually classifies one as insane, not extraordinary.”  The chimpanzee turned slightly in the hair and approached her.

“How—how--?”

“—do I know that?” he finished for her.

She nodded.

“He’s telepathic!” Pete said proudly, puffing his chest out as if it were him. 

“And your thoughts are particularly loud, dear lady,” Dr. Rockwell put his hand out to help her up.

She wanted to slap his hand away, she wanted to slap the condescending look off of his face.  The shame of the morning, filled with the shame of her current actions, warped up her insides.  She looked at it uncertainly, and then reached out to take it.  It was warm, the skin calloused, like human skin, only the shape of the hand and fingers were off.   “I don’t understand,” she said, mainly because she could think of nothing else to say that would not cause her anger to explode.

“You understand a great deal,” Dr. Rockwell said, letting her go once she was on her feet. 

She didn’t feel like she understood anything.

The chimpanzee simply stared at her, a smug look on his simian face.  The other four men silent as well.

“Did the Kraang make you telepathic?” she asked through ground teeth.

Dr. Rockwell nodded.  “I was experimented upon, and, well,” he smiled depreciatively, and the genuine look touched Phoenix in a way that his words never could have, and she felt her anger evaporating.  “It is a long story.”

“My family was mutated by the Kraang thousands of years ago?” She turned to Kurtzman for confirmation.  When he nodded, she continued, “And through these mutations, I can heal myself?”  He nodded again.  “And others?” 

“That’s right,” he answered.

“But other people can do this,” she held up her hands as if they were something not attached to her.   This couldn’t be because of some alien tampering with her body.  “There are stories all throughout history of people being able to heal—Entire religions are based on it!”  She felt panic rising in her again.  The pieces of the puzzle were not fitting together, and with each attempt she made at joining two pieces, she more agitated she got.

“Just because one is bestowed with a gift, does not preclude the proclivity for the gift to begin with,” said Dr. Rockwell, still hovering near her.  “Nor the talent to use it.”

She blinked at him, “You mean, it is something enhanced, not something created?”

“Exactly, my dear lady,” he replied.  “The ability to be psychic must already be in place in order for any mutation to bring it into fruition,” he tapped the forehead of his helmet.  “Everyone has the potential to be manipulated to become psychic, but that does not mean that everyone who is manipulated will become so, or that those who are not manipulated will become so.  In order for an item to be manipulated into something, it must have the something to be manipulated already in place.”  He chuckled, “You understand a great deal, good lady,” he continued.

“Are they speaking English?” Pete whispered loudly to no one in particular.

“You are saying that everyone could be any of these things,” she said slowly, making she understood the totality of his words.  “But some people are fiddled with by the Kraang to become a certain way.  And that some people become that way spontaneously.”

“And the two may not be mutually exclusive.”

She blinked rapidly, she didn’t want any of this to be true.  If this was the truth, then everything she’d ever believed about herself, about the universe, was a lie.

“Not so,” said Dr. Rockwell, answering her unspoken thoughts.  “It simply will need to be reworded.  You know as well as I that the universe is populated by more than we can ever know.”

Her ire rose again at what she saw as an intrusion.  “You need to stop doing that,” she almost spat at him.

“He will,” Slash came to take a step forward and looked hard at floating chimp.  Slash put his hand on Phoenix’s shoulder, and smiled down at her.  “It’s comforting to know,” he said, “that the human who helps mutants is actually a mutant, too.”

She cleared her throat, “I, of all people, don’t mind being a mutant,” she said with cheer that sounded as false as it felt.  “I lived like one for the past twenty years.”  She stood up, and looked about at the five men staring at her, each of them with an uncomfortable expression on their faces, save for Pete, whose googley eyes were filled with compassion.  “One of the Kraang said that I was one of the ones known as Not-The-One,” she turned back to Kurtzman.  “What does that mean?”

“The One,” Kurtzman explained, “is the human who the Kraang could use to be able to invade Earth from their dimension.  She’s a very special girl,” he took a deep breath and sighed.  “April O’Neil.”

April O’Neil.  She wondered if this special girl talked to phantom firebirds, too.  Phoenix looked around, her eyes drifting to the high windows at the top of the basement walls that were parallel with the sidewalk outside.  “I guess it worked, huh?”

“It would appear so,” Kurtzman said.

Phoenix took a deep breath of her own, looking at each of the Mighty Mutanimals again, then back to Kurtzman.   She felt like her mind was a racquet ball and had been batted about the room.  It was tired, and it was empty.  “So, what now?” she asked.


	106. Chapter 106

“I was thinking,” Pete drawled out, “that since the scanners can’t pick you up, and you’re so small, that maybe you could find out what the Kraang are building.”

Phoenix looked at the pigeon confused.  “What?”

“The Kraang are building something,” Kurtzman said, “something big.  We don’t know what it is”

“And none of us have been able to get close enough to it to get any information,” Slash added.

“But you,” Pete again was speaking slowly, “might be able to get to it.”

“What good does it do if I get to it?” she asked.  “Can’t we just see what it looks like from a distance?”

“We need to get this drive into the port they use to program it,” Kurtzman reached over to his desk and held up a large, rectangular thing.

From the commercials that Phoenix had seen, she thought drives were much smaller than what he was holding.  However, since the only drive she had any experience with was a floppy disk drive, she didn’t put too much stock in her knowledge.  She took it from the investigator, and examining it said, “You want me to do this now?”

“Why not?” he asked.  “You’re here.  They’re there.”

She looked around at each of the Mighty Mutanimals again, each of them looking back at her expectantly.  Well, I didn’t have anything to do today, she thought to herself with a shrug.  “Ok,” she agreed.  “What’s the plan?”

“That’s easy,” said Slash.  “You sneak in and get the information, and if the Kraang see you, we create a distraction.”

“Can’t you create a distraction first, and then I go in?” she asked uncertainly.

“It would best, dear lady,” said Dr. Rockwell, “if the Kraang did not know we had the information in the first place.”

She made a noise of annoyance.  “Alright then,” she said.   This is not how she saw her day going when she started in Chategris’ arms this morning.

#

The building that the Mutanimals had taken her to was not a building at all, but rather something like a giant silo or water tower.   It did not look like anything could get inside of it, as the unfinished parts of it were filled with electronics.  However, on the front of it, in plain sight, was the port that Kurtzman had spoke of.

“You simply press the purple square on the screen, once you’ve inserted the drive,” Dr. Rockwell had instructed her.

That sounded simple enough.  But now that she was here, simplicity had gone out the window.  The entire place was crawling with Kraangdroids.  There were two scanners roaming the perimeter, pink lights being strewn in all directions as they passed.  They would be easy to get by if they didn’t detect her.  All of the robot eyes staring out would be another thing altogether.

The four Mighty Mutanimals, she chuckled at the name, it was almost as dorky as Children of the Phoenix, were positioned at the four corners of the compass, each hidden just outside the scanners perimeter.  She couldn’t see them, and hopefully that meant that the Kraang couldn’t see them either.  However, it made her feel very alone, in a way that she didn’t recall feeling when doing something similar with her children.  She never had any doubt that her kids were hiding in the shadows waiting for her.  Now, she had to actively trust that the Mutanimals were.  

She crept a block closer, one of the drones bathing her quietly in the bright pink light, and passing her by as if it had noticed nothing.  There were two Kraangdroids in the street ahead of her, she had to get by them, or dispose of them to get to the structure that was being built.  She crawled onto the a fire ledge, her rubber soled shoes making no sound at all, at least to her ears, and managed to get just above to the two droids.  The drone scanned again, coming back around to this part of the perimeter, and again passed her by as if she didn’t exist.   She considered what to do next.  If she tried to take out these two Kraangdroids, then she might draw attention to herself, and then be overrun.  If she snuck past them, that would mean she would have Kraang behind her as well as in front of her.  In the end, she chose the cautious route, creeping over them, and then back down to the next block.

She had to weave in and out, coming to the structure from all different directions, in order to avoid being seen by Kraangdroids.  She was surprised at how easy it was to get by, it was as if the Kraang were not looking anywhere by ahead of them, that someone could not possibly come from another direction.   When she finally got to the point that she was almost at the structure, she was getting edgy.  All of this seemed a little too easy.

Two Kraangdroids marched in a geometric pattern about the structure, what she guessed was the Kraang equivalent of a guard perimeter.  She couldn’t figure out the intricacies of the pattern by watching it, only that it was done a deliberate way, with each droid doing the mirror image of the other.  She watched for a long time, trying to decipher their movements, to give herself a chance to be able to get to the port without being seen.  The screen with the purple button she was supposed to press was flat in the front of the bottom of the structure, with a hole that was obviously meant to have something akin to the drive she was holding inserted into it.   However, just when she thought she could make a dash for the port, one of the Kraangdroids would turn around, to face it again, so they would have seen her.

Well, you can’t just stay here and hope they go away, she thought to herself. 

The next time the two of them turned around, she made a dash for the back of structure, pressing herself against it, and listening intently for which way the Kraangdroids would turn next.  She heard the hum of their movements, such an intimate and familiar sound now.  When had it become so? Had she heard it so often?  She poked her head around, seeing both Kraangdroids facing away from her.  With almost a flop, she twirled in the front, pushed the drive in the port, and then twirled back behind the structure from the other direction.

Please don’t see the drive, she hoped.

She waited what seemed like an eternity, her ears on high alert for the direction of the sounds of their movements.  She heard them coming closer, their marching making a strange, but pretty, rhythm with the humming of their joints.  Then, they were moving away again, and she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. 

She repeated the move from before, going in the opposite direction—twirl, press the purple button on the screen, twirl back behind the structure.  She felt the structure vibrate slightly, but didn’t hear anything.  Did the computer in it know that she was trying access it?  Was is doing something to gear up alert the Kraangdroids?  She didn’t know anything about human computers, how was she supposed to do this with an alien computer.  She was stupid to have agreed to this.

 The vibration made it hard to differentiate the direction of the hum and march from the guards.  She waited, for what she thought was the same amount of time that she’d waited before, and poked her head around the silo-shaped structure.  Both Kraangdroids had their backs turned.  She rushed to the port, and pulled the drive out.  It made a loud _click_ as it disengaged.  

Each of the Kraangdroids turned around, to see here standing at the screen, port in hand, eyes wide in horror.  She let out a small cry as both Kraang fired at her.  She dropped to the ground, port in her hand, ‘ttthzzz’s speeding by her ears.  She managed to roll away from the structure, toward one of the Kraang, and let off a bullet from her slingshot.  She felt a pain under her arm, hear her breast, as she rolled out of the way of another shot.  She ended up behind the silo-like structure, her breath hitched.

She had just enough time to look down at her side and see that she’d been grazed by the Kraang’s laser.   Get it together, she told herself, tucking the port in her pocket, so she could have full use of both hands.  Just as the second Kraangdroid came around the silo, she fired another bullet, hearing the squish as it entered the brain-like alien the robot’s torso.

Then, the entire place was swarming with Kraangdroids.  Shots were being fired all around her, and it took all of her concentration to avoid them, as she jumped around like a dying fish in a boat.  Each time she used her arms to catapult herself somewhere else, to gain purchase on something to swing, pain shot through the side of her breast, all the way to the outside her shoulder blade.

How long did she have to jump around before help came?  Arcos, Aries, and Medusa never would have taken this long!

She came down on a Kraandriod, and stabbed it in the neck with her knife, sending sparks flying.  She felt the slight burns of them on her arm as she jumped off of its shoulders, and grabbed the bottom of a balcony.

“Now would be a good time for some back-up, boys!”

She couldn’t hear anything except the hum of Kraangdroid joints and the buzz of laser fire.  Were they not going to come?  Had the Mighty Mutanimals left her here to fend for herself, so they wouldn’t be insinuated with her attempt at getting information?  She swung from the balcony into a triad of Kraangdroids, each of their shots barely missing her.  Two of them lost their balance as her legs hit them in the chest, but the third stayed upright, her arms just clipping it.   It turned on her, aiming its gun.  She heard it warm up at almost point blank range.

And then Leatherhead stood where the Kraangdroid had been.  It was as if the Kraang had never existed, all there was, was a giant alligator mutant and pile of shiny metal under his feet.

“Thank you,” she said with a nod.

“You’re welcome,” he said in his slow drawl.  His tail, however, worked much faster than his speech, for as he was speaking, he whipped it in a way that reminded him of Medusa, taking out five of the Kraang in one swipe.  He then turned from Phoenix, and put his hands in the air.  “Krrrrraaaaaannnnnggggg!” he shouted, and began pounding Kraangdroids with his two, giant fists.

“How much did you get?” Dr. Rockwell was floating a few yards away, Kraangdroids approaching him, and then being flung by an unseen force away from him and into walls to be crunched by the impact.

“I don’t know,” Phoenix dove in between the legs of a Kraang, coming up behind it and cutting the circuitry in the back of its neck.  The body fell forward, and the Kraang inside skittered out.  “I just put it in and took it out!”

“Fall back!” she heard Slash cry in his gravelly voice.  She couldn’t see him anywhere, and assumed he must be on the other side of the silo. 

She turned, and began to follow Leatherhead.  A shot whizzed by her ear, causing her to gasp, but hit Leatherhead right in the back of the hip.  The alligator roared and turned around to face who had dared to strike him.  Phoenix did the same, and with her slingshot, hit the Kraang who was behind them right in the torso, sending a pink goo spurting in the innards of the robot-suit.  She and Leatherhead turned back to the direction they were retreated at the same time, to find it blocked by a row of Kraangdriods.

Phoenix was far enough way that she could plant her feet and begin to pelt them with her crimped bullet shells.  She saw a shadow pass above her to see Pete flying overhead.

“The drive!” he called.

She took it out of her pocket and placed it in the pouch of the sling, and shot it up into the air.  The pigeon mutant swooped down and grabbed it, and then flew off ahead of them, taking it, and himself to safety. 

Suddenly, Leatherhead turned to her, and swooped her up in one of his arms, like she was an infant, and ran at the row of Kraang.  The droids scattered as he came at them, and began to fire after they had recovered.  He held her to his body, his arm big enough to engulf her completely so that none of her body was showing to the outside world.  She tried to get a hand hold on him somewhere, but there wasn’t anything to grab, so she had to settle with simply pressing her hands against his rough, scaly body.  He smelled of fish, slightly, mixed with reptile, and she wondered if this how all alligators smelled.

She was expecting him to put her down once the sounds of the Kraangdroids faded from her ears, but he didn’t.  He kept up his run, she’d have been puffing by now.  She heard a door open, and then click shut, before she was exposed to the light of day again, and gently put down on her feet.

 


	107. Chapter 107

As soon as he put her down, she twisted to get a look at Leatherhead’s hip, before even noticing where they were.  “You were hit,” she said, running her hand around his waist until she reached his wound at the back of his hip.  She softened her vision to call up the glow-that-was-not-a-glow, and didn’t see any smudges on his front.

“So were you,” he said in slow, distinctive way.

“I was grazed,” she informed him, though her side still hurt.  “You were flat out hit.” 

And he had been.   He had a nasty wound just at the small of his back above his hip bone.  She felt a stab of guilt when she saw it through the dark black smudge of her vision.  He was the one who had carried her back, hidden from view and protected from the world, while he was sporting such an injury.   “Let’s get you fixed up, big guy.”

Kurtzman appeared with a large plastic box filled with first aid supplies.  She was surprised to see him a first, but then realized they were in the basement that was obviously their headquarters.  As he put the box down at Phoenix’s feet, he asked, “Did you get the information?”

She had to squash down a surge of irritation, but she suspected she didn’t do it fast enough, and Kurtzman took a step back, and the eager look left his face.  “I put the drive in the port and pressed the purple button the screen,” she said dryly.

Kurtzman nodded, “Good,” he said, a little too quickly.

Watching Kurtzman back up, she glanced at the other of the Mighty Mutanimals, the still watching the world glowing with life, and saw that they each had smudges that she knew now indicated bruises.  She sighed in relief, no one else was seriously hurt.

She turned back to Leatherhead, and examined his hip.  He was so large, she didn’t even have to bed down to get a look at it, it was almost directly at eye-level.  With gentle hands, she touched the edges of the opening, and felt the alligator jump.  “Sorry,” she whined.

“It’s alright,” he said.  She liked the way he talked, it was slow and deliberate, so very unlike her. 

Looking down in the first aid box, she saw that the Mighty Mutantimals had raided a hospital.  All of the medicine was from behind the pharmacy counter, no over the counter stuff here.  She was about to say something about stealing, when her own recent shopping spree at the boutique entered her mind.  She blushed at the thought, and chided herself, People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Leatherhead stood stock still as she tended to him, and it made her wonder at the kind of physical pain the mutant must have endured in the past that this was cause for so little a reaction.  She spoke to him, as she did all of her patients, explaining what she was doing as she did it.  He did not jump at the antiseptic on his broken skin.   He didn’t flinch as she wiped up his blood around his body that had run down his leg and tail.  He didn’t complain when she began to sew up the wound, using real surgical thread, not horse hair.  The difference in ease of sewing was amazing, and she felt a jolt of jealousy at those who had access to such materials.  The curved needle, made especially for sewing of skin, eased the process even more.  As she worked, she felt the ants gathering in her hands, the heat rising with each stitch.  When she was finished, she gently put her hand on the suture, and let the ants leave her hands, and crawl into the pours of the alligator’s skin.

He turned his head to look at her, and she looked up at him and smiled, without moving her hand.  With her eyes soft, the glow-that-was-not-a-glow shimmered the air about him healthily, the only wound he’d received was this one.  The skin where she had stitched it began to close together, the blood clotting quickly.

She took her hand off, and waved it, “All done!” she announced.

“Thank you,” he replied.

“You’re welcome,” she said, nodding.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he noticed.

She shook her head, “It isn’t healed yet,” she told him.  “It will.”  

“Impressive,” said Dr. Rockwell. 

She turned to face the chimpanzee, and smirked.  “All in a day’s work.”

He chuckled at her without a retort, and she knew he was letting her have that point.

“That’s all there is to it?” asked Kurtzman.

She laughed, and asked, “What were you expecting?”

He blushed slightly, and shrugged.  “Did you managed to read the drive?” he turned to Dr. Rockwell, changing the subject. 

“I am reading it now,” he answered, his fingers flying over the keyboard of a laptop.

“What does it say?” asked Slash.

“They’re building a missile.”

“Why would they be building a missile?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know,” Kurtzman said. 

“Because they want to blow someone up,” Dr. Rockwell said, rolling his eyes.  “That is what missiles are used for.”

“What would they want to blow up?” Slash asked.

“Washington D.C., maybe?” Phoenix suggested.  “Take out the government so they can take over the country easier?”

“Could be,” Kurtzman admitted.

 _Go home_ , said the unbidden thought in her head.  It surprised her, she had forgotten that only a few hours earlier, she had been on her way home before running into Pete.

“No, not Washington D.C.,” Rockwell said, his eyes getting larger and beginning to bug out of his head.  It was a very disturbing sight, and Phoenix told herself if she ever laid hands on him, she’d have to make a conscious effort to fix that problem.

“What?” Slash asked.

The five of them crowded in around the mutant chimpanzee, so they could each see the computer screen.  “You can read that?” asked Phoenix.  All she saw were purple squares.

“I can decode it,” the chimp said.  “They’re building the missile so they can release mutagen and mutate the entire planet.”

“It would have been better to blow up Washington DC,” muttered Kurtzman.

The Mighty Mutanimals and the Phoenix looked at the investigator like he was crazy.

“Let’s face it,” he said calmly to their looks, “the world could use less politicians.”

They all turned from him simultaneously and back to the laptop.

“So what do we do?” asked Pete.

 _Go home_ , the unbidden thought told her.

“We go in and bash some Kraang and destroy the missile,” Slash said.

“I am not sure if you noticed,” Phoenix said, gesturing to Leatherhead, “that one of your team is no condition to be fighting.”

“I am fine,” Leatherhead said.  “I can do whatever needs to be done.”

“No you can’t,” Phoenix said quickly.   “You need to heal.  Then you can do whatever needs to be done.”

The large alligator looked at her as she stared up at him defiantly.   There was an uncomfortable silence, before she said, “Doctor’s orders.”

He smiled down at her, and repeated, “Doctor’s orders.”

“Does it give us a timeline?” Kurtzman asked, the standoff now over.  “How much time do we have?”

“It doesn’t have one,” Rockwell replied.  “But by the looks of things, we have some time before they launch it.”  He looked at Phoenix with a dubious stare.  “Leatherhead can follow the doctor’s orders.”

She smiled smugly, as if to say, “Glad we’ve come to that understanding.” Instead, she said, “I was on my way home when I met up with you boys.  Since you are not going to be out fighting anymore,” she said at Leatherhead, “I’m going to finish my journey.” 

She walked to the stairs, and Leatherhead said, “Thank you.”

She turned and smiled at him maternally.  “You’re welcome.  I’ll be back in a week to take out the stitches.”  She pointed at him, “No fighting until then!”

He shook his large, heavy head, smiling back at her, “No fighting,” he repeated.

“Be safe, boys,” she said to the others, giving them the same motherly smile.

“You, too,” said Slash.

#

Medusa lounged languidly, curled in a lazy coil, holding a half filled wine glass in her hand.   Razz sat up against her, and raised his glass to clink on hers.  She smiled, “Cheers,” she said, bringing the glass to her lips.

The others sitting about the cushions raised their glasses, and let out a hearty, “Cheers!” before each taking a drink.

Arcos reached over and took another chunk of jerky from the bowl that sat between he and Chategris and dropped it in his mouth.  He wasn’t sure how much he’d eaten, but it had been enough that his mouth was no longer watering, and he wasn’t hungry. 

After calming The Children of the Phoenix down, and getting them to eat, the leader of the Grey Cats had brought out a case of wine bottles.  “We continue our celebration of our reunion,” he had said in his accented English.

“Where did you get wine?” Medusa had asked, her voiced impressed.

“I have all kinds of things,” he assured her.  “I get them where I can.”

So the wine had been opened, and the small group was now on their third case.

Aries, his head on Myra’s lap, tapped Chategris with his foot.  “Finish the story,” he slurred.

“He was terrified,” Chategris was leaning forward, one knee on the ground, the other near his chest with his arm resting on it.  His accent was thick with his drink, and he swirled the cup gently as he spoke.  “He said he was not afraid of things that go bump in the night,” he said.

“He looked afraid to me,” Klashtooth chuckled.

Chategris grinned and nodded, “He did, after he found out how many things go bump in the night, non?”   He chuckled at his second-in-command.  Chategris shook his head, “It is a shame that he was caught by the Kraang,” he mused, “he was good at supplying.”

“Being human helps, I would guess,” Arcos said, his voice deeper than normal.  Ghadira lay in between his legs, with her head on his chest.  She did not move much, but was still on him, so that occasionally, when his attention was brought to her, he wondered if she was asleep or not.

“He was an idiot,” Klashtooth said, repositioning himself on his cushions.  He held up his wine glass, and Sophila, a beautiful tan and chocolate ferret, filled it up again.  “He tried to give us a share of the money.”  He rolled his brown eyes on the sides of his head.  “What good does money do any of us?”

Those around him chuckled, but Chategris waves his hand graciously.  “He was alright, once he figured it out.”

“I didn’t know you were branching out in to humans,” Medusa said.

“Flatbush is mine,” Chategris’ voice was edged with conviction.  “It has always been mine, and always will be mine.  Bone Punch,” he spat out the name of the gang, “may have been only for humans, but it belonged to me.”

“When we go back to Flatbush,” said Razz, gazing at Medusa dotingly, “I will catch you an entire fistful of squirrels and feed them to you like grapes.”  He kissed the side of her muzzle.

She giggled, and turned away from him, a goofy smile on her face.

“I have some people you can eat now,” Chategris said to her.  “Are you hungry?”

Medusa laughed out loud, a nervous laugh.  The leader of the Grey Cats did not seem to be kidding.  “Not that hungry.”

“You,” he lowered his head and looked at the snake through hooded eyes, waving the hand holding his wine glass at her.  The liquid almost sloshed over.  “You would be very good at enforcing,” he said.  “No one would dare defy you, Daughter of the Phoenix.”

“Enforcing what?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.  She was a bit dizzy from the drinking, a pleasant buzz that permeated her entire body. 

“Whatever needs to be enforced,” he said, leaning closer.  His voice was very similar to how he spoke to her mother, Medusa noticed.  Did he normally speak to her that way, and she simply hadn’t realized it until now?  She had always thought that tone of voice was for the Phoenix alone, and not for anyone else, let alone her daughter.  “You are one of the most powerful mutants I have ever seen.”

“She is, isn’t she?” Razz agreed, putting his head on her tiny shoulder.

“She is,” Arcos chuckled knowingly.  “I don’t think she’s ever lost a fight with anyone.”

“Except Mama,” Aries put in, a slight pout on his face.  Myra snickered silently, and twirled his ear about her finger.

“Ah,” Chategris looked at Aries with mock disapproval.  “She is but a little human.  She must be humored, non?  It must be very frightening to live in a world of monsters when you are not one.”

Aries reached over his leg to his brother and nudged him with his foot.  “See?  I told you.”

Arcos shook his head and took a deep breath, trying to formulate a response.

“She’ll get home just fine,” Medusa said to Aries.  “Just because she can’t fight well doesn’t mean she can’t run well.”

“She can fight fine,” Razz said.  “I taught her.”

“Against what is out there?” Chategris asked, motioning to the window.

Razz looked worried for a moment, and then shook his head.

“She is a proud woman,” Chategris looked at Medusa intently, and smiled.  “She must be humored.  It makes her feel safe.”

“Stop saying that,” Arcos said.

“Saying what?”

“That we have to humor her.”

“But we do, non?”

Arcos opened his mouth to answer, but Aries cut him off.  “We’ve humored her all of our lives.  You know it, I know it, we all know it.”  He glared at Chategris warningly.  “We don’t talk about it.”

Chategris nodded, and put both of his hands in the air.  “Never again, then,” he promised, with a smug smile.  He then turned back to Medusa, “But you, when we get organized again, you let me know when you are hungry.  I have plenty of ‘squirrels’ that you can eat.”


	108. Chapter 108

She closed the door to the basement behind her slowly, and doing so brought her attention to her side.  She’d dealt with Leatherhead’s wound, but left her own unattended.  She put her hand to the side of her chest where she’d been grazed, and hissed at the sting.   She had a hole in her shirt, and clicked her tongue in annoyance.  “I liked this shirt,” she muttered.

 _Go home,_ so heard the voice that was not her voice, but was her voice, in her head.

I am going home, she answered.  She poked her head around a corner, to make sure the coast was clear.  It was, so she continued on.  The way was uneventful, she occasionally had to change her direction because of a Kraang contingency.  Once, she had to backtrack because of an EPF unit patrolling the streets.  She watched them, marching in such a way as they reminded her of the Kraangdroids marching, simply without the hum.  They did not carry mutagen guns, nor did they have scanners with them.  She wondered what they were out and about for.  Looking for mutants, perhaps.  That would make sense, after all, mutants had already been mutated.  Would mutagen even work once someone had been mutated?  She didn’t see why it would, they’d been mutated already, whatever made them change would already be in their system, wouldn’t it?  Therefore there would be no need for Kraang and scanners looking for them.  They’d have ground soldiers doing it.  A perfect job for mind controlled human beings.

Or if there were more people like her, people with Kraang DNA, would the scanners detect them?  If they wouldn’t, and there were other Not The Ones, they could be about, just like her, trying to fight them.  A lot of good she’d done so far, hadn’t she?  What fighting had she been able to do since this invasion?  All she had been able to do was help people who were trying to fight Kraang.  It made her feel small, and insignificant.  Anyone could have done what she did, if they had the knowledge.  It was only some strange stroke of fate that no one else she met seemed to have it.

She backtracked, taking a separate alleyway.  She wished she could go on the rooftops, but it was not only the day time, the scanners sometimes scanned above the roofline.  While the scanners here at the center city did not detect her, she did not want to test if the ones farther out did or not.  She knew they had detected Arcos, Aries, and Medusa.  Why wouldn’t they detect her, too?  If they did detect her, and she was sprayed with mutagen, would it change her?  She would rather not find out.

Kraang DNA, she took a deep and felt a stab of pain her side.   She sank down along the side of building, near an alien crystal tree shining a pale iridescent light the ground.  She raised her arm gently to examine her own wound through the hole in her shirt, and saw it wasn’t bad at all.  More like a carpet burn, raw and tender, the graze had been just that, a graze.  She summoned the golden ants of light into her palms, but noticed that there weren’t very many, and sent them into her side.  The feeling only lasted a moment before it was over, and she felt little relief from the stinging on her skin.   Human skin, porcelain pale, blessed with little, almost translucent body hair, which matched the skin of any other human being of her ethnicity.  Only the DNA that made it was half Kraang.

She was a mutant.  Just like her children.  Just like the Grey Cats.  Just like the Inleters.  Just like the Mighty Mutanimals.  Just like everyone else in her life, a half human, half something else.  IInstead of an animal, she was an alien.

I’d prefer to be an animal, she thought, fighting tears.  Maybe being a half alien mutant is why I cry so much, she mused.

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

And who are you? she asked it.  

She got no answer.

She had always thought of the unbidden thought as her intuition.   Upon returning home from her visits to her Grandmother’s Catholic French-Canadian household in her youth, her psychologist mother did her best to undo whatever Mass had happened to instill in her children.  She did it mainly by comparing her mother-in-law’s religion to her own Jungian psychological training.  Intuition, she’d explained, was one’s connection to the collective unconscious, the part of the unconscious mind that is shared by all individuals.

“But what is it?” she remembered asking her mother.

Her mother had put her eyes to the side in thought, and said, “Carl Jung said it was ‘the whole spiritual heritage of mankind’s evolution, born anew in each individual.’”  When she had received blank stares from her children, she had went on, “Everyone is connecting to everyone else.  We are connected biologically, we are connected in the way we operate, and we are connected in the way our brains and thoughts work.  There are certain thoughts that all human beings, since the beginning of human being-dom, have all shared.  Those thoughts are the collective unconscious.”

“You mean like how everyone is a little piece of God because of the Holy Spirit?” she had asked.

Her mother had not been happy with the analogy, it had showed plainly on her face.  “That is who people who do not understand biology describe it.”

As she’d grown up, she’d thought her mother was wrong.  There was more to the world that was not in conscious connection with one’s brain than a collection of all of the thoughts and symbols of the human race.  These thoughts and symbols came through into conscious awareness, to tell her things, to direct her, to help her, to comfort her.  If she had been more inclined to religion, she could have easily called it the Holy Spirit, but her experiences with church had never been fulfilling, and her education in classical and comparative mythology had erased any thought in her mind that there was only One Way.  There was too many similarities in the symbolism for her, a perfect explanation of the collective unconscious, but there was also too much interaction with her conscious mind, a perfect explanation of guidance of spirit. 

In high school she’d watched Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and had immediately admired the acclaimed scientist.  His explanation had suited **her** perfectly, “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself, and the cosmos is all that was, is, or ever will be.”  The collective unconscious, to her, was the Universe speaking from all the other threads that it knew to be itself, those threads she had been so privileged to see in her mind’s eye.  Since her high school days, the leaps in scientific understand of energy and the connectedness of all reality had burst into bloom, only strengthening her personal spiritual life.

She wiped her eyes, willing them to stop watering.  She thought back to what Dr. Rockwell had said, and he was right.  We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.  That meant the Kraang were also a way for the Cosmos to know itself.  That a Kraang creation, mutagen ooze, created mutants, which was another way for the Universe to know itself.   If the Kraang had not come to Earth, there would be no mutants, and the Universe would know itself in that way.      There would be no half Kraang hybrids, either, and she wouldn’t be here.

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

She stood up, and continued weaving her way through alleys and streets, being sure to check around each corner.   Seeing nothing each time, she crept along, on her way home.  As she passed a dumpster, she heard a rustling, and then a thump coming from its interior.

She froze, and stared at garbage container.  It thumped again, a loud noise, made by something big and powerful.  It rustled again, making no other noise besides those of moving items and a hitting of the side of the dumpster.  She crept closer to it, and listened, trying to discern other noises besides her heartbeat.

Was something trapped inside the dumpster?  She heard no hum, the telltale sign of a Kraangdroid.    If it was a human, would he or she not be yelling for help or at least be acting in a more panicked way?  The noises did not sound desperate, but rather random.  It thumped again and Phoenix jumped.

She put her hand to her heart and let out a slow breath.  She approached the dumpster again, and took a hold of the edge of the closed lid.  The noises inside the dumpster stopped.  She waited a moment, hands on the cover, debating what to do.   Finally, she opened the lid a little way, it was heavy, made of metal, like the container itself.  She felt her triceps work as she lifted the lid.

A white and purple, elongated head poked out quickly and darted forward toward her face, hissing sharply.

Phoenix let go of the lid and scrambled backwards, letting out a small cry.  Her back hit the bricks of the building behind her just as a splat sounded near her ear.  She looked to the side, and saw a green liquid splattered on the wall next to her.

Venom, her mind screamed.

Then the creature was upon her, a serpent with snake heads for hands, broad shoulders, a powerful body.  The Phoenix felt as if her hands were on fire all of a sudden, and she raised them to protect herself, putting them on the serpent’s shoulders to push her away.  She felt the golden light pour out of her hand like it was water, not ants, and rush into the serpent’s shoulders, feeling as if she were almost burning her palms.

The serpent mutant froze.

The Phoenix looked at her with wide eyes, fighting back the panic that had just overwhelmed her.  She was struck at the mutant’s eye’s front of her, where a moment before they were the eyes of a beast, ready to only defend itself, they now held an intelligence as they regarded the human in front of them.  This was the mutant that Medusa and the boys had met, that they had thought was so beautiful.  The back of her brain, the Observer who remained clinical, agreed with her three children.  The mutant was quite fetching, with a luminescent skin and a pretty, powerful body shape.  The serpent flicked out her tongue, only centimeters from Phoenix’s face, so like Medusa that she was struck with the similarity.  “It’s alright,” she tried to coo, though the adrenaline was still running through her system, she wasn’t sure how calm she sounded.  “I’m your friend.  You met my daughter.  She is a snake, like you.”

The serpent did not say anything, but titled her head to the side and regarded Phoenix, the intelligence still shining in her eyes.  “Fffffffffffffrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnndssssssssssssssss,” she hissed out so slowly, that it took a moment for Phoenix to be able to understand what it was she was saying.

“Yes,” she nodded, her hands still on her shoulders.  The burning in her palms had lessened, and was now only the ordinary pins and needles that indicated her regular laying on of hands to her patients.  “I am your friend.”

The mutant blinked.

“Is Shredder’s daughter!” said a loud voice in a thick Russian accent. 

Both Phoenix and Shredder’s daughter turned their heads to the voice to see a large rhinoceros mutant at the end of the alley pointing at the two of them.  The man was huge, wearing a kind of paramilitary clothing.

Shredder’s daughter pushed herself off of the wall, all intelligence in her eyes gone, and hissed loudly at the rhino.

“And human being,” the Rhino shouted, “not turned into alien!”

“What human being not turned into an alien?” said a distinctive Southern AfroAmerican accent.      Around the corner came a wart hog mutant, with a purple Mohawk, much smaller than the Rhino, wearing clothes that had glowing purple lines on them.

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

“That one!” the Rhino pointed at them.

“Run!” Phoenix breathed to the serpent mutant, and gave her a slight push.

The serpent looked at her, anger in her beastly eyes, but then it changed to fear as the intelligence came back.

The rhino and wart hog began to run down the alley toward them.

“Run!” Phoenix yelled, and the serpent sped off at an amazing speed around the opposite corner of the building.  Phoenix managed to get off one shot from her slingshot, before she followed suit.

       


	109. Chapter 109

“She try to shoot me with toy bullet,” the Phoenix heard the rhino say as she sprinted.  “Stupid woman.”

She was positive the bullet had hit him, he was a large target and did not look particularly agile.  Surely he hadn’t moved out of the bullet’s way.  Even one of her poor throws had enough force in it to act as if it was released by a weak gun.  That meant it had hit him and done nothing.  That’s why they use special guns when they hunt rhinoceroses, she thought.  The normal ones don’t do anything!

“Karai is gettin’ away!” the wart hog said.

Karai, that was the name of the white snake.  The children had told her that.  She wished she had remembered it when talking to her, she might have been able to do something other than tell her to run.

But the mutants that her children had told her were chasing Karai were not these two mutants.  She’d never seen them before, they couldn’t have been just stray ones wandering about the city, surely she’d have met up with them before now.   Were the Kraang making new mutants, even after the invasion?  What use would they have for them?  No, these were looking for the same girl that the other ninja mutants were looking for.  They were with the not-turtle ninjas.  What in the world had the poor girl done that she had all these people after her?

A ‘shwooo’ whooshed by her ear, and she saw several curved purple beams fly by her.  A quick glance behind her saw the hog and rhino chasing her at a run, and closing in on her quick.  Pump little legs, she cheered herself on, pump! 

Suddenly, above and in front of her, the wart hog appeared skating on what looked like beams of purple light.  How the hell was he doing that?!  It didn’t really matter, he was heading in front of her, and would easily be able to block her escape.  But he didn’t seem to be paying her any mind, he was looking ahead of them in the direction Karai has bolted.

“Aw, we lost her,” the hog whined, turning to look down at Phoenix.  “Because of you.”  He made a swoop downward toward her, and turned down another alleyway in an attempt to avoid him.

While it seemed to have avoided the hog, it did not avoid the rhino.  She hadn’t realized he was so close behind her.  She reached a dead end, with a dumpster blocking her way, and turned around to see the rhino’s head lowered, as if he was going to ram her.

“I so don’t think so,” she said indignantly.  She had not spent the better part of a decade trying to tame a pubescent ram to be smooshed by some rhinoceros that couldn’t speak proper English!  Right before he reached her, she leapt up on the dumpster, and then leapt again to reach the ledge of the wall behind it.  She almost didn’t make it in time, she felt the dumpster shudder underneath her when he hit with a loud crunch.  When he stood up, there was a large dent in the side of the container. 

She jumped to another ledge, to try and make it back to the main street, but was punched in the gut, and fell off by some unseen force.  She tumbled to the alley, the pain in her side blinding her for a moment.  What had made her fall off of the ledge?  No, what had pushed her off the ledge?  She managed to scramble to all fours, and ran, with her fingertips grazing the ground for balance, toward the road.  She rammed into something she couldn’t see.   She felt a hard impact on her side, and the pain from gunshot wound earlier bolted all the way down her arm.

“We could have caught her this time if it wasn’t for you!”   The wart hog materialized in front her.

He can turn invisible?! Phoenix felt dread beginning to spread through her body.

 _Go home_ , the unbidden thought said.

Go home?  Really?  Now? 

The wart hog kicked her again, and sent her off the ground.  She grunted, and curled in on herself.  There was no way she could take these two on by herself.   She heard the rhino coming up behind her, she had to get away.

When the wart hog brought his boot to her again, she grabbed ahold of his foot.  Absorbing the impact of the kick hurt more than she expected, but she did manage to get him off balance.  He fell above her, right into the rhino.  That gave her enough time to struggle to her feet and run toward the main road.

“She is getting away, fool Zeck!” said the rhino behind her.  “Get her!”

 _Go home._  Though the word annoyed her, the feeling of the unbidden thought with her was the only thing that was keeping her from panicking.  

She turned down another alley, and at the corner saw a storm drain.  Without a second though, she hoisted the grate up and fell into the sewer passage.  She crawled a few feet, so that she was shining in the light from above, and clutched her side.

“Aw, I’m not goin’ down there to get her,” she heard the wart hog say.

“We need look for Karai, anyway,” said the rhino.  “We get her later.”

Phoenix had absolutely no intention of anyone getting her, now or later.

She sat on the sewer floor, trying to get her breath back.  It was hard with the pain in her side stabbing through her with each deep breath she took, so that she had to keep them shallow.  Leaning her head back on the wall of the tunnel, she closed her eyes as she heard the two mutants above ground walk away.

She thought that mutants attacking she and her family was a thing of the past, but it seemed to be happening more often now than it did before in the invasion.  What happened to mutants being our friends? she wondered.

Go home, the unbidden thought told her.

She moved to her hands and knees, and crawled down the tunnel a little way, before standing up and beginning to walk.  She wasn’t exactly sure where she was, but since she had only two choices of where to go, she was pretty positive this was the direction she wanted.  She walked for quite a while, following the faint sunlight instead of paying attention to where she was going.  The sunlight followed the street, the street would take to somewhere she recognized to get her home.

She looked up, noticing that the light was fading.  It must be late afternoon, she mused.  Just above her head, she saw a mirror.  It was below the grate on the street, and was directed at a pipe across and slightly below it.  She recognized it instantly.   It was Aries’ light fixture!

If this was his light fixture, then that meant The Burrow was close by.  Had she walked that far?  Certainly not.  But there was no doubt that was what it was.

 _Go home_ , said the unbidden thought.

But she had the overwhelming desire to follow the pipe that held the sunlight, that held mirrors inside of it to direct the light to the rooms they had called home for so many months.  She began to follow the pipe, as if in a dream.

 _Go home_ , the unbidden thought was gentle and comforting.

I will, she promised, after this.  

She followed the pipe, looking up the entire time, and not in front of her where she was going.  Every so often, Aries had cut a hole in the pipe and had her place a smaller mirror to direct sunlight downward, as if it were an overhead lamp.  Following the lights, she came to the opening of the hallway tunnel that lead to the large room of The Burrow.

She stopped at it.  The room seemed to pull at her from her navel, as if she were tied to a rope. 

_Go home._

She wanted to sink into the words, but the pull on her body was too strong, so she walked down the dark hallway, toward the little patch of light at the end.

The large room was exactly the same as it was when they had left it.  Some of the items on the shelves were knocked over from the fight with a feral Splinter.  Morning stars and the little razors and pointed things that Splinter had carried with him were scattered about the room.  His yukata, in pieces, lay about the floor, a testament that the little part of her life that happened her was not a dream after all, but something real.

She absently touched her shoulder, where the three ugly claw marks now marred her skin, the only souvenir she’d taken from this place.  She walked over to one of the morning stars and picked it up.  The only time she’d touched these things of his was when she’d taken them off of him and then gathered them in the basket she’d made to hold them.  She ran her thumb across the middle of it, and noticed that the symbol on it was different than the one that was on the morning stars from the black robots she’d met with Anser in the sewer.   It was a circular, like a stylized flower.  Or perhaps a turtle.  She smiled, and looked around the room, seeing the photograph that had been flung from Splinter’s hand during his break.

She dropped the morning star and went to pick up the photograph.  In sepia, the four turtles she and her children had fought were smiling back at her, except for Raph.  He was scowl-smiling.  It reminded her Arcos when he was being broody.  Raphael, she said to herself, his name is Raphael.  And Leonardo, Donatello, and Michaelangelo.  She touched each face in turn, and then looked at the opening to the smaller room, where the picture had spent all of its time before the day it was brought here.

She meant only to put it on the doily she’d made, it seemed it belonged there rather than strewn on the floor here, even if the frame was broken.   Going into the smaller living space, her heart stuck in her throat.  It, too, was exactly as they’d left it, sleeping mats unfurled, kettle put away, the small car wheel they used for the fire pit cleaned out from the dinner it had cooked, so as not to make the room smell of ash.   The hand sewn doily was next to Splinter’s mat, which had been laid down straight.  Her own, closely next to it, was at a slight angle facing away from it, so their heads would have been much closer to each other their feet. 

She walked over to the mats, and slipped her shoes off before reaching hers.  She sank down on it, and reached over to put the picture on the doily, but she couldn’t reach it.  Without touching the floor, she crawled onto Splinter’s mat, and placed the picture on the little quilted piece she’d made for it.  She looked at it for a while, as the sunlight became less and less in the room from the skylights.

 _Safe,_ the unbidden thought said.

I tried, she answered. 

Then, she felt the unbidden thought leave her, as it did when a poem had completed itself, and she was left all alone in the room.

She fingered the sheet that she was kneeling on, the one that had covered him for the month he was with them.  She brought the sheet to her face, and buried her face in it.  She was struck by the smell, grapes and musk, it smelled just like him, even after all this time.  She dropped down onto his sleeping mat, and inhaled deeply.  The smell of him surrounded her, as it did the time they had slept in each other’s arms, and she’d awoken in the dark, warm and feeling more secure than she could remember ever feeling in her life.

Twice he’d held her, only twice, and those two times were strong, and possessive, and had a great sense of belonging to them. 

She took in another deep breath, and felt a tightening in her groin.  The room slowly became dark, as she lay on his sleeping mat, hugging his sheet against her like a teddy bear, and breathing in his smell as if it was a perfume made of the sweetest flowers on the planet.  She was still, letting her body feel whatever feelings it would, letting the tightening in between her legs turn to a jumping in her womb, causing her breath to quicken.  She felt as if phantom arms, made of grapes and musk, surrounded her.  Finally, she felt her body could not take it any longer, and she indulged in the desire she’d been fighting since she’d returned to the surface, his smell surrounding her own in the dark.


	110. Chapter 110

Arcos moved his arm from under Crevan, being as gentle as possible so as not to wake the silver fox.  He was successful, Crevan simply rolled over, his back now to the bear, and curled into a ball with his tail covering his face.  Arcos debated on moving Ghadira from his stomach, but decided against it at the moment, he didn’t need to get up just yet.  The room was no longer spinning, and the low light of pre-dawn was not yet hurting his head.  He was surprised the horse mutant had stuck around as long as she had, especially since he hadn’t made any moves on her.  He’d held her in his arms, and he’d played with her mane, and he’d talked to her softly.  That was it.  Either she was very patient, or she actually enjoyed his company.  He smiled to himself, either one was alright with him.

Medusa was across the way from him, coiled around Razz, her head resting on top of his.  The anole was smiling in his sleep, and occasionally his sister would stick her tongue out and waggle it, indicating that she was only in a light slumber.    She had diligently remained in the room with him, and he wasn’t sure if that was a conscious decision on her part or not.  She and Razz had kissed throughout the day and night, it was the first time he’d ever seen them do it.  He wasn’t sure if it was a new development or not.

Aries and Myra had started getting overly affectionate with each other, so that Arcos and Medusa had had to tell him to get a room.  Apparently he was still in it, because he hadn’t returned. 

Chategris, Klashtooth, and Bunny had gone off, Arcos wasn’t sure if it was an amorous tryst or not.  They had returned to the cushions at some point, she was curled in between the two of them, her head on Chategris’ pillow next to his arm, and Klashtooth’s arm draped over her waist.

He could smell, drift on the air from somewhere, vomit.  Someone had been sick in the night.  He hoped it wasn’t him.  The thought sent a little tendril of worry through his brain.

There was something he was supposed to be worried about, he was quite sure of it, but he wasn’t sure what it was he was supposed to be worried about.  It felt good to not worry about anything.  He felt like a great burden had been taken off of his shoulders, that had been carrying something, and he was so used to it, he’d forgotten that he was holding onto it.  He had set it down somewhere, sometime in between arriving here and now.   He wasn’t sure where he’d set it down, or even what it was.  But it felt so good that he was no longer carrying it.

The growing light of the rising sun began to hurt his head, so he closed his eyes and threw his arm over them to block it out.  After the little blazes of red from the weight of his arm faded away behind his eyelids, he relished the feeling of freedom and lightness on his back, and the freedom and lightness of whatever it had been that had weighed down his thoughts.

 


	111. Chapter 111

She woke up with the faint light she detected behind her eyelids.  The smell of grapes and musk, the smell of rat, the smell of Splinter filled her nostrils.  She felt like she’d gotten a better night sleep than she had in ages.

 

Oh, she thought to herself, he is getting better.  He slept the whole night through.

 

 _Go home,_ the unbidden thought told her.

 

Then the days came rushing back to her, small snippets like a slide show flashing through her brain.  Rummaging through the Haunted Warehouse to furnish the Not-Haunted Warehouse, playing checkers with the murder of crows, The Inleters, Chategris’ soft fur on her lips, a rhino mutant and a pig mutant, The Burrow in ruins…

 

She opened her eyes, her shoulder aching deep in the muscle, as if she’d been bruised from the inside.  She sat up and reached to touch her still healing scars, left from Splinter’s claws, and brought his blanket up to her face to breath it in again.  Wishing filled the space in her solar plexus that was usually left empty by his leaving, and she looked around the small room feeling lost.

 

It was the same as it was when they’d abandoned it, the same as it was when she’d arrived the night before.  Her back and shoulders started to chill with the underground air, not yet warmed by the sunlight come in through the skylight. 

 

 _Go home,_ the unbidden thought said.  It was filled with comfort, like a hen gathering its wings about her ducklings. 

 

It tickled the longing in her gut, bringing tears to her eyes.  She turned and looked at the picture of the four turtles in the photo on the little quilted mat, and said out loud, “I’m not ready to go home yet.”  Her voice sounded loud, it echoed throughout the room, cold like the light from the skylight.  She dropped the blanket, the rest of her torso suddenly exposed to the morning cold, and reached over to take the photo.  Without knowing why, and without particularly caring, she took it out of the frame, folded it in half, and placed it in her back pocket.

 

With that, she walked out of the little room, the little bits of red and glinting metal in the faint morning sun catching her attention.  She bent down, picked up a swath of the smooth cloth, and put in her back pocket also.

 

“I’m not ready to go home yet,” she said again, even though the unbidden thought had not told her anything.  She didn’t want to go home and be with her children.  She didn’t want to be reminded of her actions the day before last.  She didn’t want to be reminded of how much the kids had missed their friends.

 

They’re not friends, she told herself.

 

Of course they’re friends, she answered.  They are the only friends they have ever known, in a world that doesn’t want them.

 

She wandered out of The Burrow, not paying particularly close attention to where she was going, her thoughts fighting with themselves, as they so often did.

 

You want them, she told herself. 

 

But I am not enough, came her own answer.  She felt her heart clench in her chest.  I am not enough.  Had she ever thought she would be enough for them?  For so long, she had been, but was that not the way of all small children?  They grew, and then their mother was no longer the unerring goddess of their childhoods.  Their desires changed, they wanted friends, they wanted peers, they wanted mates.

 

That isn’t unreasonable, she said.  Why would they not want a mate?  Why would they not want peers?  Why would they not want friends?  It’s normal to want all of those things.

 

Her mind was quiet for just a moment, before it said, You want all of those things, too.

 

It didn’t matter if she wanted those things too.  She wasn’t going to get them.  She hadn’t had a real friend, or a real peer in almost 20 years.  A mate...she shook her head, mentally batting the thought away.

 

No, her mind said, excitement running through her.  That isn’t true--you do have a peer.

 

An image of Balboa flashed in her mind, her brother-in-captivity.  She smiled, quickening her steps, and turning toward the inlet.  Balboa was her peer.  She would make him be her friend.

 

It took her longer than she thought to get to the Inleters, but when she did finally did, their lookout had been extended a good deal farther away from their large room, and seemed to be more organized.

 

A mutant dropped down from the ceiling, almost giving her a heart attack in his stealth.  She put her hand to her chest, and glared at the young man.  He looked at her sheepishly and shrugged.  “Sorry, Phoenix,” he muttered.  “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing way out here?” she asked, noticing his weapons.  While they were makeshift, like hers they were obviously effective.  “Shouldn't you be a little closer to the entrance?”

 

“There are other people closer to the entrance,” he said, walking with her as she continued on.  “We have sections that we patrol.”

 

A disconcerting feeling began to creep into her legs.  “Why?” she asked slowly.

 

The young man sighed, “We had an altercation...”

 

“Oh, no,” she muttered, and then broke out into a run. 

 

The young man followed her a little way, and then stopped, and whistled into the air.  Another whistle answered him, and Phoenix guessed it was signal to let those on patrol know she was not the enemy as she barrelled through the tunnel toward the junction.

 

Visions of ninja robots slaughtering people, or of Kraang finding the junction and attempting to annihilate the Inleters ran through her head.    When she burst through the entrance, she stopped in her tracks, expecting to find chaos surrounding her.

 

Everything was fine.

 

She looked around in confusion, and Sparks came up to her, smiling.  “Hello!” he said happily.  “We weren’t expecting you here.”

 

“I…” she shook her head, trying to get her bearings.  “I wasn’t expecting to be here, it was a spur of the moment thing.”

 

Russe came up, smiling also, looking behind the little healer.  “You’re by yourself?” she asked.  She seemed a little disappointed.

 

“Yes,” she answered, waving her hand dismissively.  “There was an altercation...?”

 

“Yeah,” Sparks put his hand and scratched the back of his neck, his face looking guilty.  “We had a fight.”

 

“With who?” Phoenix asked.

 

“With us,” Sparks said.  “Some people left.”

 

She felt the anxiety drain from her body like water being poured from a cup.  “I thought--”

 

“Oh, no,” Russe laughed, her accent making the laugh sound almost fake.  “We didn’t fight any Kraang.  We didn’t really fight each other,” she looked at Sparks and shook her head.  “We had a very big and loud disagreement.”

 

Ardillo came up, holding a plastic glass of water for her.  “Hello, Phoenix,” he said quietly. 

 

“Hello, Ardillo,” she said absently, never taking her eyes off of Russe.  “I don’t understand.”

 

“There was a disagreement in how we should manage ourselves,” Sparks explained. 

 

“Tell her the truth, Sparks,” said Russe.

 

The raccoon looked from Russe to the Phoenix.

 

“It was Balboa,” Russe said, since it appeared that Sparks was not going to.  “He, and a few others, did not want to…”

 

“...work cooperatively,” Ardillo piped up.

 

Phoenix looked down at the chipmunk, and immediately felt guilty.  He was standing next to her with a glass of water, and she’d just brushed him off.  And she was complaining to herself that she had no friends?  No wonder she had no friends.  She took the glass from him, “Thank you, Ardillo.”  She took a sip, and then asked, “What do you mean?”

 

She knew that asking Ardillo and not Russe or Sparks was rude.  In fact, she intended it to be.  Her faux pas toward the little doctor-chipmunk had been her own fault, but blaming others who were not forthcoming with the proper information, whether it was hers to know or not, was much easier to deal with.  Make it there fault, she snapped in her mind, knowing she’d regret it later.

 

“Balboa wanted to go out with a small group, and Sparks said no,” Ardillo said simply, his Hispanic accent making his voice gentle.  “So Balboa went out anyway.”

 

“That doesn’t sound like an altercation,” Phoenix looked up at the racoon mutant.

 

“A little more happened than that,” Sparks admitted.  He shook his head, “To be honest, I don’t see how the two of you are related.”

 

“What?” she asked, the question taking her off guard.

 

“He says he is your brother,” Russe put in.  “He seemed to think that gave him permission to not follow the rules.”

 

The Phoenix had to stop a barb coming out of her mouth, and was surprised to find it so close to the tip of her tongue.  “Being the brother of the Phoenix does give him permission to not follow the rules,” she wanted to say.  She was not under the same jurisdiction as those around her, her children were not under the same jurisdiction as those around her, and the man who set her free, her brother-in-captivity was not under the same jurisdiction either.  The thought was a proud one, and almost overwhelming.  It was also silly.  There was nothing special about her, nothing special about her children, nothing special about her brother-in-captivity that made her or they better than any of these other people.  They were not under any special circumstances that excused them from being treated the same way as everyone else.  Knowing this, however, did not make the feeling that it should be so go away.

 

“Where is Balboa now?” Phoenix looked about the room for the tall frilled lizard.  If these people would not tell her any details, then she would find them out from the source.  She didn’t see him.

 

“He left,” Sparks said, and he did not sound sorry.

 

“He left?” she repeated stupidly, as if she’d misheard.

 

“He left, with four other people,” Russe said. 

 

“He left to go where?” she asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Russe answered.

 

“Well, which way did he go?” her voice annoyed, didn’t these people know anything?

 

“That way,” Sparks said unenthusiastically, pointing to one of the entrances to the junction.

 

Phoenix repressed the urge to reach over and slap him in the head.

 

“Excuse me, Phoenix,” said Ardillo in his polite, quiet way.  “I don’t mean to change the subject, but I am glad you came.  I have some questions to ask you…” his voice trailed off and he looked up at her with his large, brown eyes in a googly manner.

 

She took a deep breath, and counted to ten, much like she did when the kids were small and she was about to do them bodily harm.  She had wanted to be with someone, to not be alone, and she was not alone.  She was in a room filled with people.  It just didn’t have the person she was hoping to see.

 

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

 

“Of course,” Phoenix said to Ardillo, ignoring the voice that was hers but not hers in her head.  “I am at your disposal.  Go ahead and get your nurses, and we’ll have a lesson.”  She turned to Sparks, her attitude changing to one more harsh.  “I’ll stay the rest of the day and the night here,” she told him.  “Why don’t you get my place ready, and make sure to tell me any rules so that I can follow them.”


	112. Chapter 112

The longer she had stayed at the Inleter’s junction, the less her mind was on a doctor’s lesson.  She had given one on her arrival, a long one, filled with coloring and drawing of plants and body parts in the notebooks of Ardillo and the nurses.  She had managed to keep her mind on task enough that in between the drawing and actual teaching, it did not seem she was too preoccupied.  However, that night, when she lay down on the pallet that didn’t belong to her, that didn’t smell of musk and grapes, her mind flew in all kinds of different directions.

 

 It ping ponged between The Burrow, Splinter, and Balboa. 

 

Spending the night in The Burrow had been peaceful, it had felt safe, the smell of Splinter, and the ghost of his presence there was soothing to her hurting heart.  Waking in the morning had hurt, to find herself cold and alone, and she often put her hand in her pocket to feel the little patch of his cloth, torn from his body in a maddened frenzy.  She wanted to find him, even though he was her enemy, and even though finding him probably meant she’d be squashed like a bug, whether she found him crazy or not crazy.  Maybe if she found him crazy she could do something to help him, like she had with the white and purple snake, who had intelligence in her eyes after the blast of golden light had erupted from Phoenix’s hands.

 

Balboa had apparently gone in a huff, with no violence save that of words.  He’d taken a few of the Inleters with him, Anser being one.  She couldn’t get a clear story as to what the argument was about, only that Balboa and his group wanted to do something, and Sparks didn’t want them to do it.  When the argument continued, Sparks invited them to leave, and they took him up on his invitation.  She had been looking forward to talking with the frilled lizard, to find out more of his stories, to tell him more of hers.  The fact that he did not hold her in the awe these other people did was comforting in a way.  It was as if a barrier was removed between she and the other person, so that she could be seen for who she truly was.

 

A sad, ungrateful hypocrite who could not enjoy what she had in front of her because she was too busy mourning over what she didn’t have.

 

She had so much in her life, why couldn’t she be satisfied? 

 

She had three beautiful children, powerful, smart, strong, each talented in their own special way.  She had raised them to adulthood, each of them could easily stand on their own two feet alone without her or the others.  They each had a shot at a ‘normal’ life, at finding a mate, at having a surrogate family in other people like themselves.  Why would she feel as if others were taking her kids away from her, that she losing them to something she couldn’t compete with?  Why should she not be happy for them and see it as something gained and not lost?

 

She was surrounded by people, people who wanted her. 

 

The Grey Cats wanted her, they almost considered her one of their own, she was sure.  There had never been any doubt that Chategris wanted her, though she doubted strongly what it was about he wanted.  She suspected it was a power play, even if he didn’t know it.  His desire for her was not strong enough for him to faithful to her, it was not strong enough to show some sort of respect as a woman and a person.  There was always the underlying current of a lack of her regard.  It had been from the very beginning of their acquaintanceship. 

 

She had forgotten what respect as a person meant, rather than as a figurehead, until she’d met Splinter.  She wasn’t exactly sure what about him made the difference between the two, perhaps because she was his enemy, and she was quite sure he knew that she was.   But he had emanated respect for her, even when he was angry.  And she thought, sometimes, that maybe he even wanted her. 

 

The Inleters wanted her.  She had no doubt if she chose to stay here, she could, and they would be happy to let her stay.   She could oust Ardillo from his position of doctor, and demote him to head nurse.  He’d probably have no problem with it.  She could tend to these people, just as she tended to the Grey Cats before the invasion , just as she tended to the homeless people with the kids were younger.  She could have a place, somewhere, if she wanted it.  It wasn’t as if there weren’t any openings.  Why wasn’t she taking any of the opportunities presented to her?

 

She had a place to live, when so many people did not.  She had had a place to live for the past twenty years, when many of her patients were human beings that had no roofs over their heads when it rained, and had no way to protect themselves from the cold.  They had made it into a beautiful place, and when it was destroyed, they had made a new beautiful place, and when they had to abandon that, they made a new beautiful place next to their first one.  She had never been without a roof over her head, she had never been forced to sleep in the rain or the snow.  She had always had a fire to warm her, even if the warmth was not much, with walls to hold the heat in.  Why could she not be happy with the Not-Haunted Warehouse, instead of seeing it as a skewed photo of her original home?

 

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

 

She wanted to go home.  She wanted to go back to the Haunted Warehouse before the Kraang came and destroyed everything, creating crystal trees and humans with slugs for heads and robots and scanner drones marching everywhere.  But that place didn’t exist anymore.

 

 _Go home,_ it told her, lovingly.

 

And so, after doing another lesson in the morning, she bid the Inleters goodbye.  Russe came up to her as she was leaving, the tabby cat smiling shyly.  “I...ahhh…” she shook her head, and turned to go, as if she’d changed her mind about something.

 

“I will tell Aries that you asked about him,” Phoenix supplied for her.

 

The cat turned around, a smile on her face and her eyes lit.  “Spaseeba,” she said. 

Phoenix guessed it was something akin to thank you, and nodded her head, heading out of the tunnel in which Balboa and the others had gone.  It would not take her directly home, but she had a better chance of meeting up with the frilled lizard if she followed his footsteps.  Or at least the footsteps she knew about.

 

She could smell the sea from this tunnel, the breath of the ocean wafting through the gutter grates and the vents in the manhole covers.  She wandered in the general direction of the Not-Haunted Warehouse, smelling the air and listening for anything other than her own footfalls.

 

She was stuck in her own steps for quite a long time, wandering through tunnels, wanting to call out Balboa’s name, hoping to find Splinter, even if he was mad, roaming, before she heard a swoosh.

 

Her first thought, an automatic type of thought, was ‘Oh, Medusa.’  But then she instantly remembered that Medusa was not with her, and while the swoosh was almost an exact replica of her daughters to her human ears, it could have belonged to the boa constrictor. 

 

She froze, and stretched her ears out to hear whatever she could, and cursed that she was just a human.

 

She finally heard another swoosh, barely audible, farther on down the tunnel.  She followed it slowly, trying to make her own steps as silent as possible.

 

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

 

The swoosh sounded again, just like scales against a flat surface. 

 

She felt a pulling, as if the sound called to her, and she had to follow it, despite the direction to go home.    The swooshing filled her head, both on the inside and the outside,  like the dripping of the sewer had when she been lead to Splinter.  She found her footsteps quickening, until she was running after the rhythmic swoosh, swish, swoosh, of the moving back and forth of a serpentine like tail.

 

She had an image of Medusa flash in her mind, as a little thing, when she’d managed to pry her off of arm for some reason, probably to get her to go the toilet.  She had retreated to do something, perhaps something was on the stove, or one of the other children needed her.  She couldn’t remember.  But the memory of the little line of a snake, dark green against the gray of the concrete of the Haunted Warehouse, slithering across the floor as fast as her little body would carry her struck her.  It was not the motion of her body that struck her, or the look on her face that struck her, but that she had her thin arms outstretched toward her, in the universal symbol for ‘come to me.’

 

Swoosh, she heard and followed.

 

 _Go home_ , the unbidden thought told her.

 

She saw a flash of white ahead of her, with the familiar movement of a serpent body.  It was the white and purple snake!  For some reason, that surprised her, as if she’d been expecting more of an apparition of Medusa than of the pretty white serpent.  She kept hearing the swoosh, and occasionally seeing the flash of white, as if she was being lead on some sort of dream path down the tunnels of the darkened underground.  She couldn’t hear anything except the rhythmic moving of the white snake in front of her and the thought, loving and gentle, despite the adrenaline beating in her body, _Go home._

 

She had to catch that snake!  She didn’t know why, she didn’t know what she would do when she did, she just knew that she had to.  She pulled on a burst of speed, as if she were being chased by one of those black ninja robots, following the only sound in her ears.

 

Suddenly, the tunnel opened up into large space, another juncture of the sewer system.  Farther into the open area, the white snake was standing, her body swaying slightly, as if her head was too heavy for her neck to hold up.  She hissed, rearing backwards, squinting her almond shaped eyes.

 

Phoenix stood at the entrance, breathing heavily from her running, her mind jumbled as to what to do now that the snake had stopped.  She hadn’t expected her to hiss at her, to see her as an enemy.  She opened her mouth to say speak, “Friend,” she was about to say, it was the only thing that came to mind, when the room seemed to spin around the white snake.

 

 _Home,_ said the unbidden thought, and she felt a sense of arriving settle on her like a blanket on her shoulders.

 

She took a deep breath in, to steady her vision.  The snake moved from side to side, as Medusa did when she was agitated and had too much energy.  She hissed again, and the rest of the room came into focus.  She recognized it, and the feeling of arrival turned into a feeling of dread.  The snake swaying in front of her seemed almost like a mirage, a mocking apparition.  She knew exactly where she was.

 

She was in The Back-Up Burrow.

 


	113. Chapter 113

Aries yawned, stretching his large arms upward and cracking his neck from side to side.  “I still feel like you jumped on my head,” he told his brother.

 

“I’m not the one who had you drink that much,” Arcos said, keeping his head away from the street lamp that shown down on them as they walked.  The light still hurt his eyes a little, and made his stomach twist when it did.

 

“I thought drinking water and sleeping was supposed to make it better,” Aries whined.

 

“What sleeping did you do?” Arcos asked.

 

“I did plenty of sleeping,” Aries said.  “In between other stuff.”

 

“Yeah,” Arcos raised an eyebrow at his brother.

 

“You’re one to talk,” Aries was petulant.  “Ghadira was at your hip for three days.”

 

“Unlike you, I slept most of that three days.”

 

“And puked.”

 

Arcos nodded, “And puked.”

 

“Shut up,” Medusa snapped, peeking around a corner from a building in center city.  “You are going to attract a bunch of Kraang.”

 

“You shut up,” Aries said.

 

“Both of you, shut up!” Arcos snarled.

 

Medusa turned her upper body to say something, when a voice drifted toward them from somewhere.  All of them froze, their eyes wide. 

 

 “I can’t believe you lost her again,” said the gravelly voice that was all too familiar to the three of them, the bony dog. 

 

“You haven’t been able to catch her,” said a whiny African-American accent.  “What are you raggin’ on us for?”

 

“We weren’t stopped by a human with a toy,” said the suave voice of what the three kids knew to be the fish mutant.

 

“She messed up my mohawk!” said the previous speaker.

 

“Little toy is not why she got away,” said a Russian accent.  “Jumping all over like frog is why she got away.” 

 

The sounds of their voices were coming from above them, on the roof tops, and all three looked up, retreating as far into the shadows as they could.

 

“You weren’t supposed to be catching her,” said the dog.  “You were supposed to be catching Karai.”

 

“Hey, that lady could put somebody’s eye out with that slingshot,” said the speaker with the now-messed up mohawk.

 

The three children gave each other worried looks, and Aries mouthed, “Mama.”

 

“Wait,” said the gravelly dog.  Arcos knew why he said it as soon as he did.  It was the exact same way he said ‘Wait’ to his siblings.  “I smell a snake.”

 

Aries glared at Medusa.

 

“Karai?” asked the fish.

 

“No,” the bony dog chuckled.  In an instant he was in the alleyway, his shoulders hunched over, his face staring into the shadows that could conceal their bodies, but not their scent.  “I have a score to settle with you, girl,” he said, eyes on Medusa.

 

The snake slithered out, her body swaying as she did, her tongue flicking.  As she emerged, the fish fell from the roof, followed by a huge rhino and then a skinny wart hog with a mohawk.  Medusa seemed unaffected by the arrival of the others, she still moved slow and deliberately, a smirk on her face.  “Really?” she asked Rahzar, her tail swishing at the tip in an elaborate twist.  “You’ll have to do an awful lot of damage to settle the score,” she sang.

 

“Oh, I can do damage,” he said, and then he was in the air leaping toward her.  She launched herself in the air soaring above him, and landing behind all of the other mutants, her whip at the ready.  The fish, who was closest to her, flipped onto his hands, and began an elaborate set of kicks in the air as he began to hand walk toward her.  The dog hit the opposite wall, and used it to propel himself in the other direction toward Medusa.

 

Aries came out of the shadows, his sledgehammer out and made a running swing at the rhino.  The rhino mutant came at him, as if the ram wasn’t holding a weapon at all, his head down to ram him.  Aries managed to move the side, swinging his hammer as he did.  The rhino raised his fist at the same time, and using it as Aries did his hammer, stopped the ram’s attack in mid-strike.

Arcos, with his axe above his head, went for the pig.  He brought it down on where the pig was standing, but he suddenly disappeared.  He recovered from the lack of contact, and looked around him, a confused look on his face. 

 

“You can’t hit me, fool!” cried the pig.   Arcos felt an impact on his gut, and then two lasers stung him, one in the thigh and one in the shoulder.  He rolled out of the way of another volley of two lasers, and managed to get back on his feet.  “Oh, a tough guy, huh?” came the pig’s voice from nowhere.  “You won’t be so tough with my lasers set to kill!”

 

Medusa aimed her whip at the fish’s hands, in an attempt to upend him, but missed, and got a kick to the back for her trouble.  She let out a grunt as another kick, this one from the dog, hit her in the side and sent her flying like a piece of silly string across the alleyway.  

 

She fell to the street, and shook her head to clear it.  Both the dog and fish were coming at her, and on instinct, she reared up to her full height and hissed, towering over even the dog.  The fish started at the action, drawing himself up and slowing himself down enough that Medusa only had to engage the dog, who seemed unaffected by her action.

 

She whipped to the side again, her body in a long S wave, leaving an opening for the dog to fall through.  He anticipated the move, however, and while his body sailed through the arc, his fist came up and punched into her body.  The hit did not stop her movement, however, and she twisted back around on herself, catching the dog in the open arc like a hook, and carrying him farther down the street.  Both of his legs and arms were caught open by the action, and he doubled over as her body hit his gut.  Her tail swished, knocking the fish in the opposite direction she was moving, sending him sprawling into a dumpster at the far end of the alleyway.

 

Aries and the rhino pressed their arm and the hammer together, both still for a moment as they tried to overpower the other, as if in a twisted game of arm wrestling.  Aries pulled his hammer down, and ducked back, breaking the stalemate.  The rhino did not lose his balance, but recovered quickly, twirling around to face Aries again, weaponless.

 

The ram put his hammer back in the strap on his back, and smirked, feeling much less confident that he hoped he looked.  “Come on, then, we can do this the old fashioned way.”

 

“Old fashioned way?   Hah!” the rhino said in a thick Russian accent.  “The Rocksteady will crush you, boy, in old fashioned way!”

 

“You know that referring to yourself in the third person is a sign of mental illness, right?” Aries said, bringing his hands up in a boxing position.

 

“You know that fighting me is a sign of mental illness, too?” Rocksteady replied, using his horn as a fist and swinging it at the ram.

 

“Set to kill?” Arcos laughed, his voice deep and grumbly.  Maybe if he could get the pig agitated, then he could have a better chance of figuring out where he was.  “Been watching a little bit too much Star Trek, there, huh?”

 

“Don’t you fool with me, fool!” said the pig.  “Who do you think you are anyway?  I’m everywhere, and I’m nowhere, and you don’t stand a chance!”

 

As the pig was speaking, Arcos could hear where his voice was coming from, and along with his nose, thought he knew where the pig was.  “We’re The Children of the Phoenix,” he growled, punching out, and came in contact with something in the air, and the pig let out a “whooph!” and flickered in and out of sight as he rolled across the ground.

 

Arcos jumped at him, bringing his axe down, but the pig managed to roll out of the way and the axe sparked against the asphalt.  He popped back up, still phasing in and out of sight, but with that little bit of extra sense, Arcos was able to use his axe to deflect the incoming laser beams.

 

At the far end of the alley near the street, Medusa and the skeletal dog were a blur of motion.  It looked as if the snake was trying to tie him in a knot, and he kept leaping through the openings as the twisted and turned.  He would strike her with a kick or a punch, sending a ripple through her hard muscled body.  She would twack him with a part of her torso, or with her tail, and either send him off balance for only a moment, or drive his bony body, where he recovered just as easily.

 

She heard the pounding on the pavement of the fish’s robotic legs coming toward her.  She was taken off guard, however,  by the furiously strong kick to her side he delivered.  She hadn’t expected that kind of force behind it, and the ripple it sent through her set off every muscle in her body, so that her whiplash to the dog was so far off, he didn’t even have to dodge.  He was at her again easily, fists pounding into the underside of her jaw, her head snapping to the back and left, back and right over and over again.

 

She finally managed to move her head enough in between punches to cause him to only cuff her, and give her enough control over her neck movements to dart at him.  She sank her mouth into his shoulder, trapping one of his arms down as the two fangs buried themselves where his pecs were supposed to be, and the bottom jaw clamped down on his back.

 

Rocksteady pulled his fist back, and swung at Aries with a practiced flow.  The ram put his thick, three-fingered hand out to grab the rhino’s fist, and was surprised at the amount of muscle he had to put into his own arm to be kept from being thrown across the alley.  As it was, he had to hop back a little, in a move much like a small lamb, to keep his balance.  He wasn’t going to win this fight this way.

 

Rocksteady laughed, “Little boy, you now be crushed!”   His fists began to fly toward the ram with the skill of a boxer.

 

Aries hadn’t anticipated that.  He wove and dodged, and was hit as often as he was missed.  His own punches, when he landed them, were mighty and obviously hurt Rocksteady, but were not enough to do the damage that Aries normally inflicted upon his opponents.   A punch to his cheek brought stars to his eyes, but he was able to lash out with a strike of his own and hit Rocksteady flat in the eye.

 

The rhino roared in pain and put his hand over his eye socket.  It was then that Aries noticed that his other eye wasn’t an eye.  It was a jewel of some sort.  With all the speed he could muster, which was fading fast, he began to pummel the rhino mutant where ever his fists would hit.  Rocksteady recovered, swinging his head.  His horn caught Aries in the shoulder and sent him skidding across the pavement.

 

In between jumping around lasers, Arcos was able to get closer to the pig.  He moved fast, thrusting his hips and shoulders in a way that showed he had some dance moves on him if he chose to use them.  The thought distracted him for a moment, his own family’s love of dancing prancing through his brain as he deflected another laser.  He then was able to raise his axe parallel to the ground, and swing it back and forth in front of him.  He heard a ‘ssssshhhhhtttt’ of clothes ripping, and the pig stopped blinking in and out of sight, to reappear fully formed.

 

He gasped, “You cut my shirt!” he cried.

 

Medusa hissed in the back of her throat, but it was lost in the skeletal dog’s howl of pain.  It sounded to her ears just like a dog, as if she’d found a stray one on the street and begun to eat it and caused it pain.  He did not, however, taste like a dog.  He tasted like a rotting thing.  She reared up her head, lifting him off of the ground, and threw him across the street, down an opposing alleyway, all the way to the wall at the end of it.

 

She then turned the fish, dislocated her jaw to open her mouth wide enough to engulf his head, and hissed.  He stopped in his tracks and stared at her open-mouthed.  It was only a moment, before the determined look was back.  He moved his leg toward her, and then was suddenly lifted off of the ground, as if by an invisible force.  He looked around confusedly, then at Medusa, who rehinged her jaw, her face just as confused.  The fish then flew by her at an incredible speed, in the same direction she had thrown the dog, and ended up beside him against the wall.

 

“I must say, my dear,” came a voice from above her head.  She looked up to see a floating chimpanzee mutant in a  helmet and wrist cuffs.  “That was indeed an impressive display.”

 

“Thank you?” she said, her voice uncertain. 

 

When she looked toward her brothers, she saw that other mutants had joined their battles as well, on their side.

 

As Aries bounded up from his toss, he lowered his head, almost in instinct, to ram the approaching rhino, and a large something fell from above and landed on it.  Aries stood up, jumping back, his feet clomping on the asphalt as he did so.  Where the rhino had stood, now was a giant crocodile mutant.

 

It let out a roar that could have rivaled Arcos’, bent its head down and snatched the rhino up in its jaws.  Aries watched stupidly as the crocodile moved its  up and down, banging the rhino into the street.  It then swung  its head back and forth, shaking the rhino as if it weighed next to nothing.  It threw its head to the side, opening its jaws as it did, and sent the rhino crashing into the building.  The cinder blocks on the wall cracked with the impact, and the rhino fell to the ground, shaking his head groggily.

 

As Arcos swung at the dancing pig, a shadow appeared behind him, and the bear smiled as he recognized the giant turtle with the morningstar.  He simply stood up, holding his axe in front of him, and took a step back.

 

“That’s right, fool!” said the pig.  “You’re gonna--” the pig was cut off by the impact that the spiked club made with his side.

 

“I’m gonig to what?” Arcos asked.  “I didn’t quite hear you.”

 

The four mutants laid out on the ground all got up, albeit at different speeds, and retreated without a word.

 

Arcos laughed, and clapped Slash on the shoulder.  “Good to see you, man.”

 

Slash chuckled back, “You too, brother,” he said.

 

“You dropped in just in time,” the bear admitted.  “We aren’t in prime form today.”  He rubbed his temples slightly with his free hand.

 

“Hey,” a pigeon mutant fluttered clumsily down from the sky and landed in the middle of the alley.  “You didn’t leave any for me.”

 

“Pete?” Medusa asked, her voice incredulous.

 

Pete looked at her warily, his googly eyes blinking.  “Do I know you?” he said carefully.

 

Medusa shook her head quickly.  “No,” she assured him, “you don’t know me.  I made it a point for you not to know me.”

 

Pete looked confused.

 

“She’s probably seen you with our mother,” Aries walked up to Slash, giving him a friendly slap on the back.  The large mutant put his hand on the ram’s shoulder and shook it gently in return. 

 

“We saw her a few days ago,” Slash said.

 

The Children of the Phoenix were quiet for a moment, all taking on guilty expressions.  “Was she well?” Arcos asked.

 

Slash looked confused.  “She was fine.”

 

The three children looked relieved.

 

“She is quite an impressive woman,” the chimpanzee said, floating over to the group.

 

“And it’s hard to impress Dr. Rockwell,” Pete piped up.

 

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Rockwell,” said Aries, putting his hand out.

 

The chimp shook it, nodding.  “You must be Aries,” he said, then turning to the bear, “And Arcos,” then the snake, “And obviously Medusa.”

 

All three nodded in turn.

 

“This,” Slash placed a friendly hand on the crocodile’s shoulder, and pushed him forward a bit.  The croc, for all of his size and ferocity a moment before, seemed to become shy.  “Is Leatherhead.”

 

All three children smiled at him, and said in unison, “Nice to meet you, Leatherhead.”

 

All of the other mutants laughed.

 

“We’re The Mighty Mutanimals,” Slash puffed his chest up proudly.  “Mutanimals, these are The Children of the Phoenix.”


	114. Chapter 114

The snake girl had no intelligence in her eyes.  The beautiful jeweled slits that she saw through held nothing but anger and fear, as she swayed back and forth.  Phoenix almost felt as if she were trying to make the room sway with her, as it had a moment before when everything had come into horrible focus.

 

“Oh Karai!” she breathed, remembering the girl’s name.  The snake stopped swaying, and looked at her, turning her head sideways.  Still, there was no intelligence in her eyes, it was as if she were just curious at the sound of the Phoenix’s voice.

 

Phoenix was afraid if she took her eyes off of the girl that she would disappear, that she would truly be a mirage or a figment of her own fevered brain.  The pull in her spine, the same one that she got when she saw all of the golden threads in her meditation, was stronger and harder than she’d ever felt it before, and she felt a desperate grabbing in her solar plexus that the girl not leave her.

 

 _Home_ , the unbidden thought whispered in her mind.

 

This isn’t my home, she wanted to yell.  Maybe it’s her home, she thought hopefully, but as soon as the thought occured her head, she knew it wasn’t true.  In the corner of her vision, she could see the items that she and the kids had gathered in preparation for them living here.

 

 _Home_ , said the unbidden thought again.

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Phoneix heard herself whine, not sure if it was directed at Karai or at the unbidden thought in her head.  She kept her eyes on the snake, and resisted the urge to open her arms to her, as she had done to Medusa so many times before, to make the pull on her spine lessen.  “I used to know what to do,” she said.  Her voice echoed through the emptiness.  “Now all I do is run from place to place and hope I don’t get caught by…” she was going to say the bad guys, but that sounded so silly.  “...God only knows who.”

 

She sank down to her knees, like her body and bag were too heavy to carry any longer.  Still, the snake just waved back at forth.  “You knew once, too, didn’t you Karai?” she said.  She knew she was babbling, but it was all that her mind could think to do.  “And now you don’t know what to do either.”

 

The snake looked at her, and swayed gently again, her face still tilted to the side. 

 

Phoenix saw, from her new position on the floor, that a large scrape  went down the side of her body, to disappear underneath on the underside of her tail section.  “You’re hurt,” she pointed to the scrape, though it could have only looked like she was pointing to her body anywhere.  “I can help you.”

 

Karai gave no indication that she understood what she was saying.

 

She scooted forward, to try to ease her way toward Karai, but the snake reared at her movement and hissed.  She stopped, and sank onto her bottom, her knees drawn up to her chest.  “I can help you,” she said again, and then dropped her head to her knees.  “Who am I kidding?” she moaned.  She looked back up at Karai, who again had tilted her head and was regarding her curiously. 

 

“Do you live down here?” Phoenix asked, hoping that her talking would bring  some of the intelligence back to mutant.  “I lived down here for while.  Well,” she gestured around her, “not here, but down here in the sewer.  We were going to live here,” she continued, “my daughter, you met her, remember, and my two sons.  But…” she looked around, her heart wrenching as she did.  There was nothing wrong with this place.  It was dark, but Aries could fix that.  It smelled, but a good cleaning would fix that, just as it did in The Burrow.  The Not-Haunted Warehouse was no better than this.  The garden, which held the remains of her children, no longer held the same pull, it was as wrong as the Not-Haunted Warehouse, a tilted, circus mirror image of what it once was.  The increased sunlight made things grow at the wrong rate, was going to burn other things up as the summer inclined.  “But we didn’t,” she said.  “We don’t live on our other place either,” she went on.  “Everything is gone, Karai,” she said, shaking her head.

 

“Goooonnnnnnneeee,” said Karai.

 

Phoenix’s eyes lit up, and she nodded vigorously.  “Yes,” she said, her voice much more gentle than she felt.  “All of your everything is gone, too, isn’t it?”\

 

“Tooooooo daannnnngeroussssss,” Karai said. 

 

“It is dangerous up there,” Phoenix said.  She chuckled derisively, “and, down here.”

 

Karai said nothing, just swayed, looking at her.

 

The Phoenix didn’t want to lose her again.  “When I was down here,” she said, raking her mind for anything to keep herself talking, to keep the girl listening, “I met a friend that I never thought I would meet.  He was quiet, and methodical, and purposeful.”  She laughed, derisive again, “He was very different from me.  He had a beautiful voice.  He read to me,” she said, “he could read very well out loud.”  She examined the snake mutant, her eyes going soft.  The bright glow that was not a glow of living things surrounded her, and the not so bright glow that was not a glow surrounded everything else in the open space.  Even down here, in the sewer, a place of dead and decay, living force emanated from everything.   “But I did something to him,” she explained to Karai.  “And his mind left, like what’s happening to you.”

 

The beautiful snake swayed back and forth, almost hypnotically, and the Phoenix could see how the species obtained a reputation for being able to do so.  “I miss him,” she admitted, fighting back bittersweet tears.  She smiled at the memory of Splinter.  The thought of him didn’t hurt anymore, it hadn’t for a while, it only gave her a swell pleasure, with longing-tinged edges.  She moved to the side and dug in her pocket, “All I have left of him is a little piece of cloth,” she took out the silky bit of his yukata, “and this picture of his turtles.”

 

She took out the photo and unfolded it gently, holding it up for Karai as if she could understand.

 

“Turrrrrtlllllesssss?” Karai drawled, her swaying coming to a halt.

 

The Phoenix blinked, her mind racing to make sure her ears had heard the right thing.  “Yes,” she said, scooting a little closer.  This time the girl did not rear up or hiss, but stayed where she was.  “Turtles.”  She held the photo out at arms length.

 

The girl leaned forward, in a way so like Medusa that Phoenix had to work hard not to hitch her breath.  A vivid flash of her daughter as a tiny child, wrapped around her arm for years came to her mind.  How easily it could not have been Medusa there, but a little white snake with purple markings and mouths for hands.  The memory was gone in a moment, bringing her back to The Back-Up Burrow.

 

Karai studied the photo, and then said, ever so slowly, “Lllllllleeeeeeeoooooooo.”

 

All the other sounds in the room stopped as the last of the ‘oh’ entered the Phoenix’s ears.  Had she heard that right?   “Leo?” she repeated.  Surely she’d heard it wrong.

 

“Llllllleeeeeeooooooo,” Karai hissed again.

 

Phoenix beamed, and had to use all of her willpower to not jump up from the floor and scramble to the girl.  “That’s right,” she brought the picture closer to her, and pointed to a turtle, “That’s Leonardo.  Leo,” she scooted a little more forward as she held the photo out again.

 

“Ffffffrrrrriiiiiiieeennnnnnddddssss,” she hissed, her voice had a sad tenor to it. 

 

“They’re your friends?” Phoenix asked, again scooting closer.  “Leo is your friend?”  She held out both of her hands, one with the photo and one with the scrap of cloth as she tried to edge the way toward the snake mutant.

 

Karai looked from the picture to the scrap of cloth, and Phoenix froze, afraid her movement would make the girl bolt.  She slithered closer, and the Phoenix tried to keep her breathing steady.  “Ffffrriieennddss,” she hissed again, her nose touching the photo.  Then her head swung to the bit of cloth, and she nudged it, as if it would do something.  “Ffffaaaattthhhheerrr,” she said.

 

“Yes,” Phoenix kept her voice quiet, a sweet tenderness swelling up in her chest.  “He’s their father.”

“Fffatthher,” she said again, her voice sounding more human that she’d ever heard it, sad and mournful, but not as drawn out.  Then, the intelligence was gone, and the animal was all that was there.  It was as if a light had gone out in the girl’s eyes, a candle snuffed by the wind.  She hissed, the sound was fully frightening, and with lightning speed, she brought her mouth down on Phoenix’s hand that held the little shred of cloth.

 

Phoenix jerked her hand toward her in pain, and let out a scream as a stinging burn began to spread from where the stab of the girl’s fang in her palm rested.  The girl lifted her head, Phoenix’s hand raising slightly with it, still impaled by the girl’s tooth.  Phoenix jerked down hard, her hand coming free.  The girl had pierced the piece of red cloth as well as her hand, and it stuck to her palm where blood began to pool up.

 

The girl hissed again, and spit at her, a blob of green landing on her shirt.  Then, the pretty white snake darted backwards, and was all but flew down one of the many exits to the large, open space.

 

Phoenix sat, staring at her hand for a moment, before she felt the same burn as in her palm on her side.  She looked down and saw that the thick, green liquid had soaked through the fabric, and was now burning her skin.

 

Venom, she thought errantly, as she began to work the shirt off with her unhurt hand.

 

 _Home_ , said the unbidden thought.

 

She ignored it, going over to the water filters that Aries had already set up in anticipation for them living here.    She put her hand under the facet, the blood washing away as it slowly flowed up, a dark red, tinged with green.  She splashed off her side, the skin was red where the venom had stung it, but both it, and her hand, would heal fine.    She tore a strip of cloth from her shirt that didn’t have venom on it, and wrapped her hand. She held her palm in front of her face.  She wouldn’t be using the hand for a while, despite its eventual fine-ness.

 

The girl was gone.  She’d lost her senses again, become a mindless thing, and fled.  She knew the turtles, though, and she knew Splinter.  Or at least, she knew of them.  She couldn’t be allied with them, surely.  There was no way that a snake could be working for the Rat King.  Even when Splinter was unconscious, they had had to play with how close Medusa could come to his body before it began to panic at the presence of an innate predator.  She knew the Rat King loved his rats too much to ally himself with a snake.

 

So how did the girl know them?

 

She folded the picture back up and put it in back in her pocket, and rinsed off the little piece of red cloth, which now had a hole in the middle of it, like her hand.  She squeezed out as much water as she could with her left hand, and then put it in another of her pants pockets. 

 

 _Home_ , the unbidden thought told her.

 

Irritation swelled in her.  I am going home, she thought to it harshly, walking in the same direction that the pretty, white snake had fled, the direction she knew lead to the Not-Haunted Warehouse, and was the closest place to a path to the surface.

 

 _Home_ , it said again.

 

My home, she was going to make sure she got the last word in, isn’t here.

 

With her retort, the unbidden thought left her, like a poem that slipped through her fingers because she had waited too long to write it down.

 

 


	115. Chapter 115

“Well, if it isn’t The Children of the Phoenix,” Jack Kurtzman said, coming to stand at the bottom of the stairs of the Mutanimals hideout, his hands on his hips.  “We just saw your mother the other day.”

 

“That’s what we told them,” said Pete, flying above their heads to get to the basement floor without having to touch the stairwell.

 

“Oh, the dark feels good,” Arcos muttered, leaning against the wall with hooded eyes.

 

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Aries said, blinking as he descended the stairs, “but you don’t happen to have any feverfew on your, do you Mr. Kurtzman?”

 

“Feverfew?” asked Kurtzman.

 

“It’s a pain killer,” said Pete.  “Like aspirin.”

 

“No, I don’t have any feverfew.  But we have aspirin,” said Kurtzman, looking a little confused.

 

“Like, real aspirin?”  asked Arcos.  “In a bottle?  From the store?”

 

“Yes,” Kurtzman walked over to a tub and pulled the lid off of it.  He took a bottle out, and when he turned around, three hands were sticking out in the universal symbol of “Give me some.”  He handed each of them four of the pills, “Been beat up bad?” he asked.

 

“Nooooo,” Medusa hissed.

 

“Uh,” each of them looked about, fighting off guilty looks.  “We celebrated pretty hard last night,” Aries explained.

 

“And the night before that,” added Arcos.

 

“And the night before that one,” Medusa added quietly.

 

“And maybe…” Aries drawled the words out, “a little that day too…”

 

“And all the days in between,” Arcos looked at the floor.

 

Kurtzman simply looked from the ram, to the bear, to the snake with his eyebrows raised.  “Alright,” he said.  “Something big worth celebrating.”  He pointed across the room, “The water is over there.”

 

Medusa, who seemed to be the least affected of the three, nodded her head.  “We found our friends, after a long time of not seeing them.”

 

“The Grey Cats?” Kurtzman asked.

 

“Yes,” she said, surprise in her voice.  “You know them?”

 

“I know of them,” he said, closing the lid to the tub.  “I know that you are closely affiliated with them.”

 

“Who are the Grey Cats?” Slash asked, walking up behind them, along with the other Mighty Mutanimals.

 

“Allies?” asked Leatherhead.

 

Medusa looked embarrassed, more than guilty now, and her black eyes darted to her two brothers who had abandoned her for the water.

 

“I wouldn’t call them allies,” Kurtzman said casually.  “Unless it directly involves them.”

 

“They take good care of themselves,” Medusa said quietly, the green on her cheeks going an even darker shade as the red underneath it tried to seep through. 

 

“And us,” Aries said, handing his sister a glass of water. 

 

“They’re pretty insular,” Arcos told Slash matter-of-factly.

 

“They don’t trust a lot of people,” Aries explained.

 

Medusa popped the four aspirin in her mouth and drank them down.  “My mother must be glad that you’re all together,” she looked about from each face, her voice chipper.  “She doesn’t like people being by themselves.  She likes them in groups.”

 

Slash nodded, and look of relief crossed all three sibling’s faces.  “She patched us up after a fight.”

 

“A fight?” Aries asked, the relief gone.  “What fight?”

 

“A fight with the Kraang,” Pete said. 

 

“She fought admirably,” Leatherhead said in an even voice.  “Even injured.”

 

“Injured?” Aries huffed, he and both of his siblings started, their eyes wide in mild panic.

 

“Don’t worry,” said Dr. Rockwell, “she is fine, young man.  Quite a skill she has,” he said smoothly.  “I imagine that bumps and bruises don’t last long on any of you.”

 

Arcos looked as if he wasn’t sure if the chimp mutant was being pleasant or not.  A glance at his siblings showed they were wondering the same thing.  “She doesn’t tend to heal little things,” Arcos said carefully.  “She says it builds fortitude to suffer a little pain.”

 

“Good advice,” said Slash. 

 

“So how did all of you come together here?” Medusa asked, her voice a little quick. 

 

“I rounded them up,” Kurtzman said, “Looking for mutants to fight the Kraang.  And these fine gentlemen came through.”

 

“How did you know who was with the Kraang and who wasn’t?” Arcos asked the human.  “Doesn’t that put a big risk in who to be able to ask?”

 

“There aren’t any mutants with the Kraang,” Pete said in his whistley voice.

 

All three Children of the Phoenix twisted their heads in the pigeon’s direction, the panic now turned to shock on their visages.

 

“What do you mean there aren’t any mutants with the Kraang?” Aries asked, looking at his brother and sister and then back to Pete.  “Who were those mutants we were fighting when you found us?”

 

“You don’t know who they are?” Slash asked.

 

“We thought they were with the Kraang,” Medusa said, “since they attacked us.”

 

“They’re with The Foot,” Slash said.

 

“The what?” Aries raised his eyebrows.

 

Kurtzman sighed, and gestured to the corner of the basement, where an array of pillows, bean bags and blankets were arranged among a couch and some chairs.  “You kids should have a seat,” he said.  “Seems like this is going to take a while.”

 

As they made their way over to the sitting area, Slash continued, “The Foot Clan.”

 

“Guess I wouldn’t be getting in,” Medusa muttered, settling herself down in a coil on herself, not taking up one of the sitting places.

 

“ They’re ninjas--”

 

“Yeah, we kind of figured that one out on our own,” Arcos interrupted, flopping on the couch next to his brother, who was holding his head.

 

“Their leader,” Slash went on, ignoring the snake and the bear, “The Shredder, is helping the Kraang.”

 

“We aren’t sure what he’s getting in return for helping the Kraang,“ Pete said.

 

“But one could rightly guess that it has something to do with power,” Dr. Rockwell said.

 

“But why are mutants fighting with him?” Medusa asked, her face contorted in confusion. 

 

“The same reason that he is fighting with the Kraang,” Dr. Rockwell said, hovering in the air with his legs crossed.  “A share of the power, I suppose.”

 

“What kind of power can he have when a bunch of alien brains have taken over the world and turned everyone into...those zombie things up there?” Medusa asked incredulously.

 

“Perhaps they aren’t going to turn the entire world into zombies,” Dr. Rockwell explained.  “Perhaps they have promised to give him his own little kingdom on a tropical isle somewhere.  Perhaps they are going to change his mutants back into human beings, those that were human to begin with.  Perhaps they are going to mine Earth’s resources like in all the alien movies.  Perhaps they are going to turn The Shredder and his human cronies into blobby zombies also, who knows?”

 

“None of that can be enough to fight for aliens who are trying to take over the world!” Medusa exclaimed.  She looked to each of the Mutanimals in turn as she said it, but none of them answered her.  “We should be sticking together!” the snake exclaimed, as if it were self explanatory.

 

Dr. Rockwell gave her a compassionate look, very human looking on his chimpanzee face.  “You have a great deal to learn about human nature, my girl,” he said.

 

“We aren’t human,” said Arcos.

 

“We’re human enough,” the chimp replied.

 

After their small respite at The Mutanimals basement, when the aspirin had finally started to work and a great deal of water had been drank, The Children of the Phoenix began to make their way back to the stairs that lead to the outside world.  As they talked, and slowly edged toward the door,  Pete had let slip that The Phoenix had told Leatherhead not to fight for at  least a week until she came to check up on him.

 

“There’s a reason why she told you that, you know?” Arcos said.

 

“Yes,” said Leatherhead slowly, nodding his large head.  “To make sure I healed properly.  But as you can see,” he gestured, again with a slow methodicalness, to a scar on the side of his chest, “she has already given me more medical treatment than I am used to.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Medusa said with a wink, “we won’t tell her you broke the rules.”  She turned when she got to the stairs,  “We will see you all in a few days, then,” she said, “when Mama comes back for clinic...”

 

“You’ll be coming with her?” Leatherhead asked.

 

The guilty looks came back to all three of their faces, and Arcos nodded slowly.  “Yeah,” he said, before exiting the basement, and gently closing the door behind him.

 

The three of them walked in silence for a long time, peeking around corners, and back tracking or side tracking, depending on what they found around them. 

 

“They’re wrong,” Aries said eventually.

 

Neither of his siblings answered.

 

“They just never came across any mutants that were fighting for the Kraang,” he continued.  “That doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

 

After a moment’s silence, when the ram thought his siblings were going to say nothing, Medusa said quietly, “Maybe they’re right.”

 

“They can’t be right,” Aries said.

 

“Maybe they are,” Medusa repeated.

 

“They never met those turtles,” Aries raised his voice.  “They never met that rat.”

 

“Shhhhh…..” Medusa hissed, looking at Arcos for support.  “Keep your voice down.”

 

The bear said nothing, and glanced from his brother to his sister.

 

The ram shook his head as they walked, his golden eyes squinting, the horizontal pupil making it look as if his iris was cut in two.  His ears shook with the vigorous movement of his head, and his voice cracked, “They’re wrong.”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Arcos said, putting his hand on Aries’ shoulder. 

 

“Yes it does,” Aries snapped, snatching his shoulder away.

 

“No it doesn’t,” Arcos replied.  “What matters is if they’re on our side or not on our side.  What matters is if they attack us or they don’t attack us.   What matters is if they are here or they aren’t here.”

 

“I think maybe, they’re right,” Medusa hissed faintly.

 

Arcos shot her a nasty look.

 

“They’re wrong,” Aries voice was adamant. 

 

“It doesn’t matter, “ Arcos said gently, “because there aren’t any turtles.  He paused, “And there isn’t any rat.”

 

Medusa cringed at the words.

 

“How do you know?” Aries voice cracked again, and he cleared his throat.

 

“Because if there were turtles,” Arcos’ voice was calm, and sounded very much like his mother’s when she was trying to regain control of an emotionally charged situation, “they would have come to save Splinter.  And they didn’t.”

 

“They couldn’t find him,” Aries huffed.

 

“They couldn’t find him, because they’re dead,” again the bear was calm, his eyes on his brother’s, glancing occasionally at Medusa as she lead them through the labyrinth of streets to their home.  “When you’re dead, you can’t find anyone.”

 

“Maybe they’re bad at finding things,” Aries cleared his throat again.

 

Arcos was quiet for a moment, “They’re ninjas,” he said.  “I would guess they’re very good at finding things.”

 

Aries glared at his brother, reluctantly conceding his point.

 

“Splinter’s gone, too,” Arcos said, gesturing with his head to keep them moving.

 

“He’s roaming around the sewer somewhere,” Aries argued.

 

Medusa hissed.

 

Both boys froze, but saw that their sister had hissed at them, not at what she saw around the bend.

 

“He’s dead, too,” Arcos took up the rear behind Aries, his brother’s lack of attention beginning to get to him.  “If he isn’t dead yet, he will be soon.”

 

“How do you know?” was his brother’s reply.

 

“Because nothing is going to be able to survive down there by itself in these conditions,” Arcos’ voice had lost its gentle touch.  “There is nobody throwing anything away, except for the EPF, there are Kraang roaming everywhere, as well as those weird ninja robots...nobody is going to make it on their own.”  He gestured behind them, from where they’d come, “Shoot, wool-for-brains, even the four of them got together, because there wasn’t any way they were going to make it on their own.”

 

Aries was silent.

 

“He’s dead.  Or will be soon,” Arcos repeated.  “And that’s all we really need to worry about, isn’t it?”

 

 


	116. Chapter 116

The Phoenix tried not to be snippy when her three children came home.  They were grown, they could do what they wanted without her interference.  What was the difference between them being gone at the Grey Cat’s new home and them being gone chasing after the Grey Cats themselves.  Was the whole reason for them being gone days at a time for this very thing.  She was thinking rediculously if she thought that they wouldn’t celebrate, and they wouldn’t celebrate hard.  They had worked hard, all of them.  Chategris had proven to be more of a leader that she had ever given him credit for.  He’d had few casualties since the aliens came, despite having to move around the entire city, and being chased by aliens and mutants alike.  She tried to push her hurt feelings away.  He had people to take care of, he could not have come to look for her family right away.  He had get everyone else situated.   Perhaps it really did take two weeks for his people to get situated.  She didn’t know what was going on with them at the water, maybe they were trapped where they were.  Maybe they were hungry and thirsty, and all of their energy was on getting food and water.  Maybe they had to fight despair, like she and her children did those first days underground in the sewer.  She knew too well that despair left one immobile and unable to cope.  A quick vision of Ailurosa popped into her head, and she shook it to make it go away, before shame at her own selfishness could invade her thoughts.   In this world that they now lived in, there was no room for either despair or shame.  Chategris had to take care of the people he lead.  The Children of the Phoenix and their mother could not be on the top of their list.  

 

But she was unsuccessful. One look at Aries brought back the vision of him disheveled, with the cavy girl cowering behind him.   The image caused her disgust at his actions and the shame of her own to bubble up, despite have squashed them during her time since her return to the warehouse.   "Home so soon?" she asked as they climbed through the kitchen window.   She regretted it as soon as it came out of her mouth. 

 

All three them had guilty looks on their faces, as if they'd been caught with their hands on the cookie jar just before supper. 

 

Their visages made the regret fade immediately, replaced by annoyance.   "You had a good  time,  I take it," she said, her voice showing how she felt. 

 

"Yes," Aries answered in the same tone.   "We did." 

 

"Good," she replied.   "I am glad your visit was worth while."

 

"You're the one who left early, remember?" Aries snapped.   "Or did you forget storming out all by yourself?" 

 

"I did not forget at all," she replied. "Nor have I forgotten that it was three days ago."  She picked up her tea cup from the kitchen counter and walked over to the formica table with the peeling chrome legs. The guilty looks on their faces had not faded, but became more pronounced at her words.  “Nor am I ignorant as to what the three of you were doing.  Being inebriated in some shape, form, or fashion while aliens are milling about is not the best decision in the world.”  There was no other reason they’d be gone for so long after she left.  One could only have so much sex before it got boring or body parts no longer worked the way they were supposed to.

 

“Leaving to go out with aliens milling about isn’t the best decision either,” Arcos said in his gruff voice.

 

“I did just fine,” she answered.  “So did we,” Arcos shot back.

 

“We were surrounded by other people,” Aries said, “we had all of the Grey Cats with us.  You went off by yourself.”

 

The occurrences of the past three days flashed through her mind, her terror at the scanner hitting her with the pink light, her shock at it not detecting her, and her shock again at the reason why.  The searing on her side from a Kraang, the same species whose DNA intertwined in her own veins.   Her meeting the Mighty Mutanimals and Jack Kurtzman once again, Pete saving her skin just in time.  Her downloading of the information from the strange structure the Kraang were building.  Being enveloped in Leatherhead’s arms, the world dark to her eyes, and the fishy smell of alligator filling her nostrils.  Her encounter with the pig and rhino, her fleeing to underground. the Inleters and her discovery of Balboa not being there, when she wanted so badly someone to talk to, Karai, leading her through the sewers to the Back-Up Burrow, the word home ringing in her head...“I did just fine,” she repeated.  “Despite the color of my skin, I am not made of porcelain.” 

 

“What happened to your hand?” Aries asked accusingly.

 

She looked at it, a pink mark on her palm where Karai had pierced it with her fang.  She had no incidences at all on her way home from the Back-Up Burrow.  She’s left quickly, the haunted rhythm of  home  making her more angry each time she heard it.  The farther away from the place she got, the less the unbidden thought spoke to her, until the word was repeated no longer, and The Not-Haunted Warehouse was in view.

 

Her hand had healed the way all of her body healed, quickly and with little pain.  The only thing that surprised her was she developed a fever.  At first, sneaking through the streets back to the warehouse, she thought she was having a hot flash.  It’s finally arrived, she thought to herself, the change.  If she had felt old before, she certainly did now.  Though she knew it was silly, she felt that the wrinkles on her face must be getting deeper, the platinum at her hairline creeping back farther into her now honey colored hair.  Menopause was an unmistakable sign of age, the doctor in her brain told her.  There were no excuses of hard living in a warehouse with no hot water for that.  But when the heat in her skin continued, she began to wonder if hot flashes were supposed to last this long.  Weren’t they called flashes because they were quick?  She'd have to look that up.  But when the heat had finally left her, her body broke out in a sweat, and she realized it was a fever breaking.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d have a fever, it had been so long ago.  The sweat that now sheened on her had a green tinge to it, and stung her skin as it dried.  It smelled acrid, not the normal muggy smell of sweat.  She realized, with a sense of wonder, that her body must have been excising the venom from Karai’s bite through her skin.  Well, at least I don’t have to worry about being in danger of venomous creatures, she told herself.

 

After returning home, she’d  spiked two more fevers and broken out into two more sweats, similar to the first one, and as soon as she did, she washed herself in the little workman’s shower to get the stinking, stinging stuff off.  As soon as the green tinged substance was off of her skin, the stinging stopped. She washed the little scrap of cloth, too, now with a hole in the middle of it, gently with shampoo.  It came clean, she was glad, and after it had dried, she folded it up in to a little  ball and tied it to a leather string she found in Aries workshop.  The placed the homemade necklace about her neck, and the little ball of red material hung at her heart, and she felt that was a good place for it to rest.  She could feel it there, against her skin, and it reminded her of the scars on her shoulder, and the arms that had twice surrounded her, and the finger that wiped her tear away.  They seemed so long ago now, and dream-like, and pleasant..  After that, she’d not had another episode, the little fevers lasted only a day, and then she was right as rain, as she would have told her patients.

 

“I got hurt,” she told her son simply.

 

“Is that where you got hurt by the Kraang?” Medusa asked.

 

She furrowed her brow, despite that she was glad she’d not have to dodge questions about her injury to her hand.  “How do you know I got hurt by the Kraang?”

 

“We met The Mighty Mutanimals,” Arcos said.  “They told us.”

 

Phoenix smiled, despite the third degree her children were giving her.  “Quite the bunch, aren’t they?” she said.

 

“You can say that again,” Medusa also chuckled.  “It’s good to know other people are fighting the Kraang.  I like them.”

 

“Me, too,” Phoenix replied.  

 

“They told us a little about those mutants that we’ve fighting, the ones who are after Karai,” Medusa went on.

 

Phoenix raised her eyebrows, had it only been a few days ago when her own episode with them had happened?  “Oh?”  She took a sip of her tea.

 

“They’re with a group called The Foot Clan.  They work for a human called The Shredder,” Arcos said.

 

The image of the man standing on the building, the mutants about him as the wind blew and the night came down upon them blazed in the Phoenix’s mind.  “That man we saw,” she turned to her daughter.

 

Medusa nodded, “I think so.”

 

“What man you saw?” asked Aries, his face twisted in disconcertion.

 

“We saw a man a while ago,” Medusa waved one of her little arms at him, “while we were still at The Burrow.”

 

“The Foot Clan is working with the Kraang, not for the Kraang,” Arcos went on.

 

“What’s the difference?” his mother asked.

 

“Apparently there is a lot of difference,” Arcos said.  “The Mighty Mutanimals said that no mutants were working for the Kraang, directly.”

 

Phoenix chewed on her lip, and her eyes drifted to the side, as they did when she was thinking.  “That’s why they need those little mind control devices, even on the mutants we’ve seen,” she said quietly.

 

“Yeah,” Medusa said.

 

“They’re wrong,” Aries said in a huff.  “I know they’re wrong.  You know they’re wrong too, Mama.  You know they are.”

 

His mother looked at him with a far away look on her face.  “Maybe,” she answered.  “Maybe not.”

 

“Wishful thinking doesn’t make it so,” the ram shot at her.

 

She was surprised at the comment.  It sounded like something she would have said to him, not the other way around.   His face was angry, as if someone had personally insulted him for saying such a thing, as no mutants were working for the Kraang.  She wondered why.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Arcos said firmly, and again, Phoenix was surprised by his tone of voice.  It, like Aries, sounded like her.

 

Then, the fog seemed to clear, and her mind began to whirr.  If no mutants were working for the Kraang, that mean Splinter and his Turtles weren’t working for the Kraang.  If they weren’t working for the Kraang, then they were working for The Rat King, who wanted mutagen for some reason from the Kraang.  But he had to steal it, because the Turtles showed up in the same manner she and her kids did, in the dark of night, demanding the blue-green ooze filled canisters.  But maybe the Rat King hadn’t survived the invasion.  Maybe...she felt horror twisting her face as the thought occurred to her.  The Rat King could control rats, did that mean he could control Splinter, too?  

 

Maybe...maybe he wasn’t with the Rat King.  Maybe…

 

“Mama, are you OK?” Medusa reached over and rubbed her arm.

 

She’d must have been lost in her thoughts longer than she’d thought.  “I’m alright Curly Que.”

 

“See,” Aries pointed on of his thick fingers at his mother, “You know they’re wrong.”

 

“Maybe,” she said again, her voice not so far away this time, but tinged with hope.  “Maybe not.”    



	117. Chapter 117

She wanted to go into the sewers and look for Splinter.  She knew he was down there somewhere, he had to be.  He had torn those ninja robots into little pieces of metal, she had seen him move when he was in The Burrow, like something walking on air.  There was no way that was all gone.  He had to be down there somewhere.

 

If she could find him, maybe she could fix what she’d done.

 

She was debating with herself, how to go about looking for a rat man who was roaming the city in a crazed state, when she decided she would make the same loop she made only a week ago.  She’d see the Inleters, and give Ardillo some of her herbal books, before that, she’d check up on Leatherhead and see how his wound was doing, and first she would go to the Grey Cats and make-up with Chategris.

 

That was becoming a very tiring pattern.

 

She gathered up her stuff, along with her kids, and headed toward the center city.  She made Aries carry her books, Arcos carry her two messenger bags, and Medusa carry a bag full of actual herbs to give to Ardillo.  It have her a sense of control to be able to make them do something.  She was the Mama, after all.

 

When they arrived, Chategris sauntered up to them, smiling.  “You come bearing gifts?” he asked.

 

“Not for you, I am afraid, my friend,” Phoenix answered as the kids relieved themselves of their burdens and wandered off among the cubicles.  

 

“Not any at all,” Chategris said quietly, bending over and putting his face close to hers.

 

She could hear him purring, and his lips were softly parted, his hazel eyes looking intently into hers.  She chuckled, and moved her head over to the side, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.  “There is your gift.”

 

He stood up, his white eyebrow whiskers raised.  “C’est ca?” he asked.

 

“C’est ca,” she replied.

 

“Who is all of that for?” he asked, moving his muzzle in the direction of the pile of bags the kids  had dropped.  He draped his arm over her and began to lead her away.

 

“For another doctor,” she said.

 

“Another doctor?” he asked.  “There is more than one now?”

 

“Yes,” she replied.  “I cannot be everywhere at once, you know.”

 

“Ahhh,” he turned the corner, and presented her with the same little room they had spent the night in, filled with cushions.  “I know that,” he sank down on one side, and motioned for her to do the same.   “Many has been the time I have wanted your touch and you are nowhere to be found.”  He smiled viciously, “Only to find you are touching another mutant with your little hands, ma cherie.”

 

He said it in French, and his smile unsettled her.  It hit her like an accusation, despite the teasing tone he used.  There was no reason it should be accusation, she could touch whomever she wanted, in whatever way she wanted.  She touched people only to heal them, despite the desire to do otherwise occasionally.  Her hands were used to comfort, not to excite.  And if they were used to bring someone’s blood to boil, it would be none of Chategris’ concern.  She stamped down the vexation that was starting to bubble up, she did not come here to fight with him.

 

Playfully, she replied, “And who have you been touching with your hands, lately, mon ami?”

 

“Not you,” he said waggling his eye whiskers.

 

“Ahh,” she sat down beside him, but not against him as she had the other day she’d been there.  “So your hands have been touching someone.”

 

“There are too many delectable treats to not partake of the sweets, ma cherie,” he said.  “You should try some of them sometime.”

 

“I did, remember?” she told him.  “Or do you forget your sweets so fast?”

 

“That was just a little taste,” he leaned forward toward her.  “Sugar on the tip of the tongue.”

 

She leaned back and raised and eyebrow, a playful smile still on her face.  However, the words hurt her feelings.  She was only sugar on the tip of his tongue, after giving so much of herself after having not seen him for so long?  He had fallen asleep in his arms, hearing the purr in his chest under her ear.  She had kissed his lips, in a way she’d not kissed someone in almost 20 years.  She’d let him touch her body, let his tongue in her mouth, and that was only sugar on the tip of his tongue.  That was silly, why should she be hurt?  The night she’d spent in his arms was a conflicting tangle of pulling, pushing, wanting, and being repelled.  Why would his words hurt her feelings if she didn’t want those kinds of words?

 

Chategris reached over and took a bottle of wine from behind him and offered it to her.  “Vin?” he asked.

 

“No, thank you,” she shook her head.  “I’m not thirsty.”

 

“It’s good,” he said, procuring a glass from behind him also, and popping the lid to the bottle.  “You’re children especially liked it.”

 

“My children like a lot of things.  Like chocolate chip cookies,” she replied, her voice not so teasing anymore.  “Do you have any of those?”

 

“Ah, ma cherie, do not be angry with them,” he said, holding the glass out to her.  “That they are happy to see their loved ones is not a bad thing, is it?”

 

She shook her head at the glass again, she didn’t want any wine.  “Are they their loved ones, Chategris?” she asked.

 

“They act as if they are,” he said, leaning back again, and taking a sip of the wine.  “Are we not your loved ones?”  His eyes were wide and innocent.

 

“Are we your loved ones?” she asked gently, her voice far away.

 

He opened his mouth to answer her, the vicious, animalistic smile back on his face, when a whirring noise suddenly emanated through the room.  They both sat up, and looked around, the buzz of the whir and of the Grey Cats talking in the room became louder and louder.

 

Then, the lights came on.

 

Both Chategris and the Phoenix looked up, as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.  They then looked at each other, confusion in their eyes.

 

“The light are on,” Phoenix said stupidly.

 

“There are humans outside!” one of the Grey Cats called.

 

Everyone made a mad dash to the windows, crowding each other in small clusters before spreading out so everyone could see.

 

Sure enough, on the street below them, people, human people, had appeared out of nowhere and filled the sidewalks and streets.  A great cheering went up outside, as the humans realized where they were.  People were grabbing at other, hugs and kisses exchanged between strangers.  Some of them fell to their knees and began to cry.

 

The Phoenix felt her breath catch in her throat as she looked out the tinted, one way window.  There were actual human beings outside.  Humans without little mind control devices in them.  Humans without guns, without military uniforms.   Humans of all ages, babies, children, teenagers, adults, old people.  Normal, everyday human beings were in the streets!

 

And no Kraang were in the streets anymore either!

 

An echoing cheer went up in the room, Phoenix’s voice among them.  Most of the group began to run to the stairwell, her children included.  Many of them reached the stairs before the back part of the room could register what was happening and run to join them.  

 

“STOP!” Chategris bellowed.  Those that heard him froze in their tracks, including The Children of the Phoenix.  “Do not go out there, idiots!”

 

A lone scream came from outside, and everyone’s attention turned to the window again.  Some of the mutants had opened the front door, joy on their animal faces.  The joy on the faces of humans around the doorway immediately vanished.  A man screamed, pointing at those who had exited the building.  As if in slow motion, other screams began to sound, and then a rush of people converged on the little group of mutants.  From their view above the building, the Grey Cats could see their comrades being torn apart before their very eyes.  Human hands grabbed at them, and pulled off chunks of fur and skin, and then they banded together and began to tear off larger chunks of body, so that Phoenix turned away from the window, her stomach threatening to bring up what she’d eaten before arriving.

 

“Turn off the lights,” Chategis hissed, “and no one make a sound.  Whoever was to patrol next, go to the second floor and don’t let anyone to this floor of the building, and don’t let anyone know you’re in here.”  He looked about at his gang, standing to his full height, a hateful look on his face.  “The rest of us will wait until it the streets clear out, and then we will leave.”

 

“Oh god,” Phoenix said, taking a few steps away from the window, suddenly very glad that it was tinted glass and no one could see in.  The feeling of euphoria from only a moment ago was not completely gone, replaced by horror and disgust.

 

“This way, ma cherie,” Chategris’ voice was gentle, and he put his arm about her.  She let herself be lead away, to the little cubby where they were before, where they had spent the night the week before, and she sank down on a cushion.  “The tables have turned now, non?” he asked.  “It is you who is safest here.”  He sat down next to her, and put his arm about her shoulders comfortingly.  She leaned into him, her stomach still protesting the scene outside.

 

The others began to arrive, her children, Razz, Bunny, Klashtooth, Myra, and Ghadira.  Apparently she and Arcos had taken a shine to each other, she noticed.  “Why would they do that?” Myra asked, “They weren’t do anything to them.”

 

“What did you think they were going to do when they saw a bunch of monsters emerge from a business building?” Chategris hissed.   “Jump for joy and embrace them as brothers and sisters?”

 

Myra looked ashamed of herself, and Aries tightened his grip about her waist, pulling her a little closer to him.  

 

They were silent for a long time, with Phoenix leaning on Chategris’ shoulder, all of them huddled close together, as if touching would make the horrible scene that occurred outside go away from all of their inner eyes.  The buzz of mutants whispering to one another would slowly become louder and louder, and Phoenix could feel Chategris’ body tense the louder it got.  Finally he would hiss, “Shhhhh!” and the floor would fall silent.

 

They did not hear anything from the floors down below, and those who had been sent down eventually came back up to be relieved by the next group assigned.  Being still and silent, Phoenix had time to think about the structure of the group around her.  Chategris, during this entire invasion, had shown a degree of leadership ability she had not previously given him credit for.  She had assumed, mainly because of the Battle of the Pretty Building, that he had no real organization in place, other than who could intimidate who better than anyone else.  But that, apparently, was not the way the Grey Cats worked.  Chategris, or someone, had created a smooth system of guards, patrols, obtained weapons, food.  Chategris had obtained, or maintained, she didn’t know which, order.

 

Someone came from one of the other cubicles, and asked, “Are we really going to sit here until the street is empty?”

 

Chategris looked at him, his face brutal.  “You are more than welcome to go outside and get torn to pieces.”

 

The mutant shook his head slowly.  

 

“Go watch the windows, then,” the cat told him.  “You can tell us when it is empty.”

  
The sun went down, and the floor got darker and darker with no lighting in.  However, it made the outside very clear, as the street lights were on.  The people who had appeared out of nowhere had gone back to their homes, or to somewhere else, none of them really cared at this point where.  But, they had been replaced, they were told, by an EPF patrol.

 

Aires huffed angrily, and turned to Chategris, who was still holding his mother, “How are we going to get out of here now?”


	118. Chapter 118

“How many of them are there?” Phoenix asked, getting up from the cushions.  Chategris’ arm fell from her shoulder, his hand gliding down her back to skim over her butt, and down one of her thighs.  

 

He got up after her, as everyone in the little cubicle did, and followed the mutant to the window.  There were only three military guards out, and all of them were clustered together in the street.  They were not going into the buildings, only making their way up and down the road, nervously looking in various directions, obviously checking out things that they heard about them.

 

“They’re spooked,” Razz noted.

 

Phoenix nodded.  “I will distract them,” she said, “and the rest of you will sneak out of here, silently.”  She looked about at those gathered.  “Silently,” she whispered harshly.

 

“And go where?” Myra asked.

 

“Back to The Cargo Bay,” Chategris told her.  “If not one is at the Haunted Warehouse, it is unlikely there is anyone there.”

 

“How are you going to distract them so we get out the door?” Arcos asked.

 

“I’ll keep their attention away from the door,” she began to walk toward the stairs.  “Hopefully,” she added.

 

The cat nodded.   Looking to Razz and Klashtooth, he said, “Get everyone organized into twos and threes.  Those on sentry, and we will leave last.”  He looked to Phoenix.  “Good luck, ma cherie.”

 

The irony of him telling her, of all people, good luck was not lost on her.  Usually it is the other way around, she thought.

 

She went out the back door, her thoughts running as to what she was going to do to distract the guards. What would a middle aged woman be doing out in the middle of the night after being rescued from an alien invasion?  She received a flash of inspiration, and marched toward the road through a little side alley.

 

“Jayla!” she called.  “Jayla!”  She emerged from the alley into the road, a good deal farther down the street from the building.   “Please, Jayla!”

 

“Ma’am,” said one of the uniformed men, his gun held in front of him, “there is an 8pm curfew, we need you to return to your residence.”

 

She saw the door to the building open, and three mutants creep out.  All three of the men were facing her, and she saw they were all young, and their faces filled with uncertainty.

 

“My daughter!” she ran up to the one closest to her, and reached for him.  “I can’t find my daughter.  I was here, and my daughter is gone.”

 

“Ma’am,” he said, holding one of his hands out, “there is an instated curfew, you have to go back to your residence.”

 

“I can’t go back without my daughter!” she almost wailed, hearing her voice echo back to her from the empty street.  She had to school her features to let the “oops” show on her face for being so loud.

 

“We will do everything we can to find anyone who is not in shelter,” said one of the other men.  

 

Another group of mutants exited the building and melded into the shadows.

 

“You have to get back your residence ma’am,” said the third man, his voice more firm than the other two had been.

 

The second soldier began to turn, to look about the alley, and Phoenix grabbed at him, letting go of the first man.  “But she’s so small!”  she exclaimed.   “Please,” she looked to the third man, who had spoken with more confidence than the other two.  “Please help me.”

 

The third soldier’s face melted into a compassionate expression.  “Ma’am,” he said, keeping his voice calm.  “I am sure she’s in good hands.  Someone has probably taken her in for the night when the curfew was instituted.”

  
“But if she isn’t?” she implored, her heart pounding the longer the conversation went on.  Small groups kept exiting the building, the occupants melding into the shadow.  “What if she’s out here somewhere, alone and afraid?”  She turned second soldier, “My baby is out there, and she needs her mama!”

 

“Listen, lady,” he said.  “We’ll keep an eye for her.  That’s why we’re here.”  He nodded, smiling like a kid trying to act like a grown up.

 

The Phoenix flicked her eyes back to the door, she’d seen her kids exit the building, she’d seen those who had been on sentry exit, that meant that only Chategris’ elite were left.  “But she needs me,” she told the soldier.  “Who knows how long she’s been gone, who knows what those aliens did her!”

 

“The same thing they did to everyone, lady,” the first soldier said, “but she’s probably OK now.”

 

Again, Phoenix flicked her eyes to the building, and saw the cat, rabbit, and lizard, crossing the street, half-hidden in the faint light.  Her eyes must have stayed on them too long, because the first soldier turned, and looked right at them.  “Mutants!” he cried out.

 

The third soldier, standing nearest to Phoenix, pushed her behind him, almost pushing her down.  “Stay behind us,” he ordered, and then began shooting his gun toward the Leader of the Grey Cats and his two lieutenants.  

 

The three of them scattered at the laser shots, Klashtooth and Chategris resorting to all fours when they landed, Razz grabbing a streetlamp and spinning about it as if it were a piece of playground equipment.  

 

Her first instinct was to grab her slingshot, somersault backwards to gain some distance, and then shoot all three of them in the back of their necks.  She did the first part, her arms reaching behind her.  They touched the asphalt, her legs followed suit, and she drew the sling from its hold on her belt.  With a fluid motion, she grabbed a bullet casing, and took aim at the base of one of the soldier’s heads.  His hair was cropped very short, a crew cut, revealing that his neck was clear and clean, with no pink dot for her aim at.  She didn’t want to hurt these men, the thought popped her her head as if it wasn’t hers, they aren’t the bad guys anymore.  But she couldn’t have them shooting at the Chategris, Klashtooth, and Razz.  She changed her aim to the soldier’s tricep, and let the bullet fly.

 

It hit the man with a soft thuumpptt, and he let out a scream as he dropped the gun.  He grabbed his arm with his unhurt hand, and all three of them turned to face the Phoenix.  The other two brought their guns to bear on her, and fired.

 

She lept out of the way as the lasers hit where she’d been crouching, heading toward the back of a building.  She heard a growl behind her, that she recognized as Chategris’ and turned around in time to see him jump on one of the soldiers.  She stopped in her flight, seeing the cat lay his thin, sharp teeth into the neck and shoulder of one of the men.  Klashtooth had come also, turning in midair during a jump, to land on his hands and rake his long, strong back legs upward, the claws on his feet inviserating the man in front of him who was holding his own shot arm.  Razz landed directly in front of one of the soldiers, almost on top of him, and twisted himself around, his tail whipping at the man’s knees.  Phoenix heard the sickening crunch of bone being broken, and the man fell to the ground with an awful cry.  A clawed, reptilian hand grabbed at the man’s neck, and the cry became strangled, and then the road was silent.

 

In a moment, it was all over, and the road glistened with the dark liquid that came out of the bodies lying on the ground.  Phoenix came over, looking confused, and shook her head slowly.  “Why didn’t you just run?” she asked.

 

“We couldn’t leave you here,” Razz said, straightening his shirt.  “Medusa would never talk to me again.”

“I was running,” her voice sounded imploring, even to her own ears.  

 

“Viens,” (Come), said Chategris, putting his arm around her, “We cannot stay here.”

 

She let herself be lead away, her head swimming.  “I was running away,” she said again, “You should have, too.”  She stopped walking when they got behind a building, and looked up at the gray cat next to her, “That was the plan.”

 

“The plan was not for us to get shot at because of your bad acting,” Klashtooth said, leaning against the wall.

 

“My bad acting?” the entreaty in her voice gone.  She spun on the jack-rabbit mutant.  “My bad acting got everyone out of there before the three of you were being shot at!”

 

“Assez!” (Enough!) Chategris commanded.  “We need to get back to the Cargo Bay, and make sure everyone is alright.”

 

“Everyone is alright,” Phoenix said, putting her hands across her chest.  “I saw them,” she glared at Klashtooth, “they all ran away while I was acting!”

 

“Assez,” Chategris said again, pulling her tighter against him, bringing a paw around to cup her elbow as her arms were still crossed.  “Let us go home.”

 

She wiggled out of his grasp, her face set in a frown.  “Come on, then,” she said, glaring at each of them in turn, and leading the way down the alley.  She heard Chategris laugh behind her, and she kept facing forward, she would not let him get to her.  He could laugh all he wanted.  But then, she was off her feet, in his arms pressed to his side, and he was leaping up the fire escapes to the tops of the buildings.  She let out a little cry, and then gulped it down, not wanting anyone who might be about to hear it.  She had to wrap her legs about Chategris’ waist to keep herself from being flung about against him.  He was warm, she could easily feel the difference in temperature where her body was against his and the night air.  As they went onward, her shirt rode up slightly to reveal her a bit of her torso, The fur that showed on his arm was soft as it held her, and would tickle her slightly depending on his movements.  They were swift, all three of the mutants jumping from roof to roof in a way she could never hope to do.  

 

They arrived at the Cargo Bay, to find each of the Grey Cats that was in the building there, an no humans at all.  “It doesn’t look like anyone came here while we were gone,” Crevan told them.  “Everything is still the same as it was when we left.”

 

Chatgris put Phoenix down, her feet alighting on the floor.  Each of her children came out of the throng, Aries with Myra, Arcos with Ghadira, and Medusa alone.  Razz was immediately by her side, took her hand in his, and kissed it.  Well, Phoenix thought, that answers that lingering question.

 

The crowd of mutants was now dispersing, each of them exploring their own spaces in their home to make it theirs again.  She looked at her children, each of them had a sheepish expression on their faces.  She smiled at them sadly.  “I am going to go home,” she said.  “You all,”  she looked at each of the mutants that stood at their sides, “can stay here with your friends.”

 

“I’ll get your stuff,” Aries said, turning to go.

 

She shook her head, and held her hand up.  “No, it’s alright.  Just make sure it is in a safe place, and I’ll get it when I come over next.”  She desperately wanted to ask them to carry it for her home, perhaps then they’d just stay with her there.  She could invite the three others to come, they would all have the privacy of the children’s bedrooms.  But she didn’t.  She turned, fighting tears, and climbed the steps of the familiar fire escape and jumped the rooftops to her Not-Haunted Warehouse, which was not home.

 


	119. Chapter 119

The Not-Haunted Warehouse was quiet, the sounds of birds drifted in through the window, the skittering of squirrels on the sides of the building, the rustling of rats in the walls, all of these little noises could be heard loud and clear behind the buzzing of the now running fridge.  She had all the time in the world...to think.  With only herself to feel and wash for, it took no time at all do housework.  Cooking for just herself seemed a useless endeavour, so she simply ate straight out of the can or box, and only then when she was hungry.  There were stretches when she wasn’t hungry for a long time, and when she stood up, the room would swoon, and she’d berate herself for going so long without eating that her blood sugar could get so low.  

 

To keep from thinking, she wrote a lot, and she meditated a lot.  Both were uneventful, both were the same melodic listening to the voice that was not her voice tell her things, most of which she didn’t understand.   But they helped her to not think in the whirring, wheely fashion that her brain liked to do, that kept sleep or calm just out of her reach.

 

The kids came and went, nabbing  items of theirs to take back to the Cargo Bay, or bringing things from the Cargo Bay back to their rooms at the warehouse.   The boys took boxes of things back and forth, and Aries informed her that they each had their own bedrooms, on the top floor.  “Except for Medusa,” he said carelessly, “she stays in Razz’s.”  

 

Each time they came over, she wanted to take them, and whoever was with them, by the hands and say, “Come, stay here.  It is good here.  We have the garden, and the workshop downstairs, and it is quiet and peaceful…” but she didn’t.  She knew none of them wanted gardens, or workshops, or quiet, or peace.  If they did, the three of her kids would have brought their people here, and not the other way around.  She was torn with being happy for them, they had what she had always wished for them to have.  They had friends, apparently they had mates, they had a place to live out their lives with people they cared about and who seemed to care about them.  She was truly happy for that.  Another part of her wanted to drag them all home with a feral, “MINE!”, lock them in their rooms, and stand at the garden window with her slingshot, ready to pick off anyone who came to take them from her.  She knew that was unreasonable.  She knew that wasn’t what she wanted for them.  She also knew it was exactly what she wanted for her.

 

You can’t always get what you want, played in her head quite often.

 

Medusa brought Razz over, and the two of them stayed over in the snake’s room for two days.

 

Her mother was surprised by what had brought them there.

 

“We were fighting,” she told her mother, as they sat at the kitchen table, “so we decided to get away from the Cargo Bay.”

 

“What about, Curly Que?” she asked as casually as she could.  She didn’t feel casual.  She wanted to go into Medusa’s bedroom where the anole was sleeping and beat him with a stick for fighting with her daughter.

 

“What to call each other,” she replied.

 

“Medusa and Razz?” Phoenix suggested slowly.

 

Medusa gave her mother the ‘seriously?’ look.  “How we should reference ourselves when speaking to other people,” the snake clarified.

 

“Ahhh,” Phoenix nodded sagely, not feeling as sage as he nod indicated.  “Why is that a problem?”

 

“Because people were saying I was him woman,” she hissed.  “I’m not one’s woman.”

 

Phoenix shook her head quickly, “No,” she assured her, “no, you are your own woman.”

 

Medusa chuckled at her mother’s proclamation.  “That’s right,” she said with a nod.  “Besides, you have to be having sex with someone to be their woman,” Medusa shrugged.

 

Phoenix thought she was going to choke on her own shock.

 

Medusa laughed, and wended her way around the table closer to her mother.   She looked at her with playful satisfaction.  It was hard to get one over on her Mama, and the older they got, the harder it was.  She enjoyed the brief ability to do so.  “I haven’t had sex with him, Mama,” she said, gently.

 

Phoenix could feel her face turning an ugly mauve color.  She should be over this kind of embarrassment by now.  After all, this was her daughter she was talking to, her adult daughter, who was allowed to have sex with whomever she chose.  It wasn’t as if Phoenix could do anything about it.  And, she’d had much more embarrassing conversations with her sons.  “Y-Yo-You’re allowed to have sex, you know,” she managed to stutter out.

 

Medusa smiled, making her black eyes crinkle in o little crescent moons, and showing more of her fangs than normal.  “I know,” she said.  “I don’t want to.”

 

That brought Phoenix out of her state of embarrassment.  Her doctor brain immediately started running through scenarios that might lead to what was wrong with someone ‘not wanting to’ have sex.  Stress.  Depression.  Constantly being in the fight or flight response.  For a woman to want to be intimate, she needed to feel safe and secure, the amygdala had to be turned off.  Was she not feeling safe and secure?  Of course she wasn’t feeling safe and secure, she was a giant snake who had to be in hiding all of her life!    “You don’t want to?” she asked, “are you sure?”

 

Medusa recognized the look on her mother’s face, and rolled her eyes.  “Of course, I  want  to,” she said.

 

Phoenix felt a rush of relief as the healer part of her thought process bedded back down in the recesses of her mind.  She was feeling safe and secure.  Thank goodness!  

 

But then Mama popped up, and the anxiety was back.  She wanted to have sex?  She could get hurt.  Someone could take advantage of her, twist her beautiful snaky body into a knot, and then stomp on her sweet heart.  Someone could give her a disease!  Phoenix didn’t have a cure for some of them!  “You do?” she asked.

 

“Mama!” Medusa huffed.

 

Phoenix shook her head.  “I’m sorry, Curly Que.  Go on.”   She might make Razz a eunuch while he was sleeping as well as beat him with a stick.

 

“I don’t want to be like the women that Aries and Arcos have,” Medusa explained.   “I want to be like you.” 

 

Her daughter’s admiring look took her off guard, and confusion started to seep into her mother’s righteous protection.  “Because those women have sex and I don’t?” she asked.

 

Medusa turned her head to the side, so she was looking at her mother through one eye, and flicked her tongue out.  That was a sign of the snake’s annoyance, her mother knew.    “No,” she said.  “Well, yes,” Medusa shook her head, coming to face her mother again.  “Sort of.”

 

“I don’t understand, sweetheart,” Phoenix put her hands out in defeat.

 

“People think very highly of you,” Medusa said.

 

“What people?” her mother asked.

 

“Everyone,” Medusa said.  “Everyone I’ve ever met.”

 

Phoenix looked at her daughter dubiously.  “I don’t understand,” she muttered.

“Part of the reason that people think highly of you, is because you don’t sleep with anyone,” Medusa explained.  

 

Phoenix beat down annoyance. Understanding was still not coming to her, and she did not like to be confused.  She’d rather be hurting than confused.  Now, she felt as if she didn’t understand, and Medusa didn’t understand.  “No, Curly Que,” she said, “I don’t think that’s it.”

 

“It is it,” Medusa said with quiet assurance.  “I’ve heard them say it.”

 

Phoenix blinked.  “People think highly of…” who was a player that she could think of who was thought of highly?  “Bunny.  Or Chategris.”

 

Medusa looked at her mother compassionately, as if the human was just a little child, not acquainted yet with the world.  “No, Mama, people are afraid of them.  They don’t think highly of them.  They think highly of Razz,” she went on.  “He hasn’t been with anyone for three years, because he said he was waiting for me.”

 

She decided not to beat Razz with a stick or make him a eunuch.  That earned him a lot of points.  “I don’t think that is because of them sleeping around, honey,” Phoenix said.

 

“I do,” Medusa replied.  “Because I heard people.”

 

“That’s rather hypocritical of the people saying it, I would imagine,” her mother drawled.

 

“Yes, it is,” Medusa agreed.  “And even they say it.”

 

“Well, they shouldn’t say it,” Phoenix nodded her head authoritatively.  “It’s wrong to think that just because a person  sleeps with someone, they’re not good enough.   We can’t judge other people like that.  If it isn’t hurting us then...”   She felt frustration knot in her chest, and she bit her lip, trying to come up with the right words.  Words were usually so easy for her.  She wanted to raise her children to be accepting, goodness knew they needed it themselves.  Yet, here she was, having a conversation with her daughter about the lack of merits of those who choose to sleep without a commitment.

 

Medusa sighed, and shook her head.  “No, Mama,” she almost whined.  “It’s not the sleeping with someone.” 

 

“I thought it was about sleeping with someone,” Phoenix was befuddled again.  She thought these kinds of conversations were over.  Were you supposed to be this addled when your kids were this age?

 

Medusa gave an agitated hiss.  Then, her eyes lit up, “Remember when we fought that giant licorice plant with those turtles?”

 

Cluelessness settled over Phoenix like a cloak, so that nothing else was coming in or getting out.  What in the world did turtles and licorice plant mutants have to do with having sex with someone?  “Yes.”

 

“You told me that you knew they had integrity,” Medusa said.

 

“Yes...”

 

“You said you knew they had integrity because of their actions, that’s why they didn’t attack us.”

 

“Yes….”

 

“You said you knew because of that they wouldn’t have raped that girl we saved in that alley, like those thugs were going to do.”

 

The conversation, which had taken place so long ago, came rushing back to her.  “Yes,” she said more decisively.

 

“That’s what it is,” Medusa explained.  “People think highly of you, because you have integrity.  They know you have integrity, because you don’t sleep with anyone, because it means something to you.”

 

Phoenix opened her mouth to say something, but Medusa continued.

 

“You know who else people think highly of?  Toaster and Dezi,” she said.

 

Toaster and Dezi?  “Wha?”

 

“Do you know they’ve been together for over twenty years.  With just them, and no one else?”

 

Phoenix felt a flush of shame blossom in her chest.  No, she hadn’t known that.

 

“Everyone thinks highly of them.  They make fun of them, but they know they have integrity, because of their actions.”

 

Phoenix had no reply.

 

“That’s what I want.”

 

“You can have that,” Phoenix said, because it was the only thing she could think to say.

 

“I know,” Medusa nodded.  “Just not right now.”

“When?” the words came out before she could stop them.

 

“I don’t know,” she blinked her black eyes.  “When it shows that we have integrity, I guess.”

 

Phoenix put her hands on each side of her daughter’s muzzle, her fingers at her cheeks.  She looked deep into her eyes that had no discernible iris or pupil, and kissed her in between her nostrils.  “All I ever want for you, Curly Que,” she said vehemently, “is to be happy.  However it is that you can be happy.”

 

“Knowing I did the right thing makes me happy,” Medusa replied.

 

Phoenix blinked back the tears that suddenly come to her eyes.  

 

Her baby girl was all grown up.

 


	120. Chapter 120

Phoenix spent her time scouring for people, and coming up empty handed.  With each passing day, her worry grew.  The news had shown two dead mutants, killed by ‘concerned citizens.’  A reports on a poor mutant named Muck Man kept popping up during the shows on the TV.  He was...like something she’d never seen before.  He seemed to be a conglomerate of all kinds of things, inanimate things.  The Phoenix could see why the population would be frightened of him.  But the film and photos of the man showed a face that was terrified, and a mutant trying to escape from being hurt, not trying to escape from having hurt others.

 

It was odd walking around and not having to sneak, though she found herself doing it anyway, out of habit.  People were walking about, going about their daily lives, almost as if an alien invasion had never happened.  People seemed to be kinder at first, but she could see the cohesion slowly eroding.  Eventually, everything would be just as it was before, only this time, they would be hunting mutants they now knew existed.

 

She hadn’t yet found much of anybody.  No crows, their little nest at the top of the apartment building had been retaken by its former occupants, as it should have been.  No Mighty Mutanimals, their basement had been ransacked. It was obvious that they’d been discovered by the Kraang..  Jack Kurtzman had not returned to his former apartment.  In fact, it looked as if he’d moved out before the invasion, all of his stuff was out of it.  She’d found only a few of the singular mutants that roamed the city, a lucky strike with the unbidden thought telling her where to go.  She had met a few that she didn’t know from before, and she felt good that she was able to give them a little emotional comfort in a situation that was boding even worse for them than before the invasion.

 

She’d gone down to the sewers, and she’d found no Splinter, either.

 

She plopped down on the couch and turned on the television with Medusa and Razz, sighing in frustration.  The news was on, and she leaned forward, staring at the screen in amazement.

 

It was Jack Kurtzman!

 

His segment looked like it had been pre-recorded, but he was on the evening news, he might still be at the station!    She jumped up.  “I’m going out, kids” she called to Medusa and Razz, getting her medical bag, and grabbing an empty one.  “I’m going to talk to Mr. Kurtzman.”

 

Medusa looked up from the TV.  She was draped across the back of the couch, as normal, and Razz was sitting flat out in the middle, his head leaning back on the snake’s powerful body.  “OK, Mama,” she said.  

 

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Razz asked.  “I mean, with all the humans around…”

 

Medusa laughed, and bopped him in the back of the head with the tip of her tail.  “She is a human, silly.”

 

Phoenix felt a twinge of guilt at hearing the words, another reason to talk to Jack Kurtzman, she supposed.

 

“Be careful!” Medusa told her.

 

The Phoenix shook her head, and chuckled.  Was she the one who was supposed to be telling her children to be careful?  “I will, sweetheart.  Bye!”

 

She climbed up the garden window, to the roof, and began sprinting across them, toward the television station.  She reached it with no trouble whatsoever, and sat on the roof in the building across the street watching the front door.  

 

She hoped, selfishly she knew, that if she gave Medusa and Razz some “alone time” that they might be more inclined to stay with her at the Not-Haunted Warehouse.  No one had yet come to retrieve the third in command of the Grey Cats.  Maybe he had a choice as to where he could stay and he would choose to stay there.  It already appeared that Medusa had chosen to stay with him.

 

Just as she’d chosen to stay at the Not-Haunted Warehouse.

 

She is a human, silly, Medusa had said.  She looked at one of her hands, five fingered, with short round nails.   No fur to hide the the pale skin and the veins beginning to stick up, belying her age.  She could jump down from the top of the building she was crouching on, down to the people below, and nothing would be thought of her being there.  She would blend right in, a normal New Yorker walking the New York City streets, going wherever it was she was going.  Not a single one of them would know she wasn’t a human.

 

She wasn’t a human.

 

The thought made her heart race, and took a deep breath to try and calm herself.  She hadn’t told the kids what Jack Kurtzman had revealed to her.  She told herself that it just never came up.  Whenever she thought about it, something more important was happening, or the children weren’t all there.  How would she tell them, anyway?  Gather them together in a family meeting and announce, “By the way kids, you know all those years we thought I was an ordinary human?  I wasn’t!  I’m a mutant, too!”?

 

She had so many questions, they buzzed through her head like bees at night, and not a one of them mattered any longer.  The Kraang were gone.  It didn’t matter that she was half Kraang, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t human, it didn’t matter...that should make her feel better.  But for some reason, it seemed to put a weight on her shoulder, as if a heavy item had been placed in her bag.

After the night was deep and dark, and the people walking the New York City streets who would have thought nothing of The Phoenix walking them with them had dwindled to only a few, the door of the news station building opened, and Jack Kurtzman walked out.

 

Phoenix used the fire escapes at the side of the building to jump her way down to the street level, just as the investigator was approaching.  He was waving at another fellow, walking in the opposite direction.  “See you tomorrow, Phil!”

 

“You too, Jack!” Phil replied.

 

As the older man passed, limping very slightly, she stepped out of the alley on the side of the building, “Excuse me, Mr. Kurtzman,” she said.

 

Kurtzman gasped and jumped around, drawing a gun from under his sport’s coat. 

 

Phoenix put both of her hands up, her eyes wide, “It’s me!” she squeaked.

 

Kurtzman relaxed visibly, and put the gun back in the holster.  “Phoenix,” he breathed.  “You scared the bejeeses out of me.”

 

If Phoenix hadn’t been so unnerved about having a gun pointed at her, she would have laughed.  “I…” she shook her head, suddenly at a loss for words.  “I saw you on the news.”

 

He looked at her like she was nuts.

 

“I mean,” she looked back into the alley in which she’d just come, and then back up to the reporter.  “I haven’t been able to find anyone, and then I saw you on the news.”

 

“Ahhh,” he nodded, taking a step closer to her.  “I guess all your people have been jostled around with the return of the humans.”

 

All of her people, not his people.   Mutant people.  “Most mutants--” she began.

 

“Shhhhh---!” he took another step toward her.   “Mutants aren’t the most popular people right now,” he whispered.

She nodded slowly, stamping down a defensive annoyance.  She wasn’t an idiot, she knew that mutants weren’t “popular” right now.  Since when had they been?   “I haven’t been able to find anyone,” she said quietly, but with authority.  “I saw you on the news, and figured you could show me to your boys, so I can check up on them.”

 

“They’re not your kids, Phoenix,” he said, his face looking a bit contrite.  “They don’t need someone to check up on them.”

 

She felt her face getting red, heat rising from her chest, up her neck, and nestling in her cheeks and ears.  He must have seen it too, in the low light of the street lamp, for he took a step away from her.  “I do not check up on  my people ,” she spat out the words, “because I need to.  I do it because I want to.” It took all of her willpower not to scream at the man.  “One of the Mighty Mutanimals was injured the last time I saw him, and I want to see how he is doing.”  

 

He held his hands up, “Easy there, now,” he said in his reassuring reporter voice.  “I have to check with them, to make sure they want me to take you to them.”

 

The tone he took made angry tears jump to her eyes, and she blinked quickly to dissipate them.  

 

He seemed to notice her distress, for he leaned forward, his eyes becoming imploring.  “They might not want anyone knowing where they’re staying.”  He looked at her intently.  “You should understand that.”

 

She did understand that.  It didn’t make her any less angry, though.  She nodded curtly, the strands of her long  hair that had come loose from her hair sticks bounced as she did so.  “If you could tell them I’d like to see them, I’d appreciate it.”  She looked away from him, back into the alley, then back to him.  “Even if it is in a neutral location.”  She tried to make her voice calm, and doubted very much that she’d done so.

 

He nodded, “I will,” he told her.  “Come back by next week.”  He turned, and began to walk away.

 

“Mr. Kurtzman,” she said, “you’re limping.”

 

He turned, and looked down at his hip.   “Yeah,” he chuckled.  “I got shot during the battle with the Kraang.”

 

There had been a battle with the Kraang?  Of course, there must have been.  They didn’t just disappear all on their own, now did they?  Just because you aren’t involved in everything doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, stupid woman.  She felt more selfish than she had when the night started.

 

“Would you like me to help you with that?” she took a step toward him.  

 

He shook his head and smiled.  “No, thanks.  My doctor is taking care of it.”

 

She stood staring after him, watching is back walk away from her, and felt like she had been slapped in the face.  His doctor was taking care of it.  He’d been shot by the Kraang, and his doctor was taking care of it.  She blinked, and took in a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.  Turning, she climbed back up the fire escapes  to the top of the building, and began bounding across the rooftops.

 

The cool air flowing past her ears and neck, pressing her t-shirt to the front of her body, dragging her bag along behind her, were all welcome sensations.  She needed to feel something than this useless that was invading her soul.  She decided to go to one of her “flower patches” as she called them, and do a little gardening.  Getting my hands in the dirt will help, she told herself.  It will help to ground me.

 

She didn’t want to feel grounded.  She wanted to feel...wanted.

 

She arrived at one of her spots, just outside of Chinatown.  It was a large, abandoned lot surrounded by a chain link fence. It had been overgrown for years, whoever owned it taking no note of what was happening on the property.  So, she used it as a type of messy garden plot, encouraging the weeds she wanted, and pulling the ones she didn’t.  

 

She jumped the fence, grabbing the linking half way up, and vaulting herself over the top.  Though the fence was obviously made to keep people out, it didn’t work, Phoenix knew, because she did a clean up mission each time she came to check on it.  With a plastic grocery bag on each hand as a glove, and third one for the garbage itself, she began picking up condoms, beer bottles and cans, needles, syringes, and she even found what she thought might be a diaphragm, but wasn’t sure.  There were pens, pencils, rubberbands, candy wrappers, and other general junk lay all around.  I need to come here more often, she told herself, this place is getting kind of nasty.  Three grocery bags later, the place was picked up, and it was time to weed and gather herbs.

 

She got in a steady rhythm of picking, putting plants in other grocery bags she’d picked up, or throwing the weeds into a pile in the back corner.  There was a beautiful, gnarled old rose bush in the back, against the building, and she spread some of the decomposed weeds from her last visit around it, in hope of urging some rose hips from it that fall.

 

“You know,” said a familiar, cocky voice from behind her, “it’s illegal to trespass on other people’s property.”

 

She whipped around, drawing her slingshot as she did and arming it in one fluid motion.  On the other side of the fence was the lanky form of Casey Jones.


	121. Chapter 121

Annoyance washed over Phoenix like rain overhead. Casey was standing against a lamppost, in full hockey gear, plus some. The light from the lamp shone down on him, glinting off the small parts of clean white that made up his outfit. He had his helmet up on his head, but his face was painted like a bad Halloween replica of a skeleton. He had his arms crossed, and his shoulder against the pole, his hip cocked out.

Was he trying to look...sexy?

Oh, the poor boy failed miserably!

The annoyance drained out of the Phoenix as it had come, in a smooth sheet, like water. Keeping her slingshot trained on him, she said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, “I’m not in the mood to fight you tonight, Casey.”

“Ho, Little Mama,” he pushed himself off of the post, and held his hands up in a gesture of peace. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

She regarded him for a moment, and then lowered her weapon, putting it back on her belt. Little Mama was much better than Grandma. “Where’s your friend?” she asked suspiciously.

“Out,” Casey didn’t sound happy about the question, or the answer. “Where’s your daughter?” His voice was accusatory, as if he wanted to sound big and bad, but hadn’t quite mastered it yet.

“At home with her boyfriend,” Phoenix replied. The “I’ve got it covered” look on the youth’s face turned into one of disbelief, so that Phoenix laughed out loud. “What?” she asked, in between her laughing, “you don’t think a giant snake with arms can get a boyfriend?”

He didn’t answer.

She laughed even harder, and tried to get a hold of herself. She wouldn’t tell him that ten years ago, before meeting the Grey Cats, she wouldn’t have thought so either. Of course, Casey didn’t appear to be a chick magnet. He was missing his front teeth and his frame was in between a man and boy, where he had stretched out, but not yet filled out. Tears came to her eyes from her giggling, and with her vision softening, the light that was not a light illuminated everything in her vision. The non-living items glowed softly, with an aura that hugged them close. The living things glowed more brightly, shining with different intensities. Casey’s glow had large, black splotches all over it, with a large one on his head.

By the time she managed to stop laughing, his look had changed from disbelief to incredulity. She wiped her eyes, and asked, “So, what happened to you? You look like you’ve been through the ringer.”

He crossed his arms again, the puffed-up attitude back. “I was fighting the Purple Dragons,” he left no room in his voice to doubt he was bragging. “They were robbing a bank in Chinatown.”

She tried to tone down her smile, so as not to seem too condescending at him. She wasn’t sure if she did or not. “I can see them doing that,” she said.

“You know them?” he asked, surprised.

“I’ve patched a few of them up,” she told him. “The ones who don’t want to risk going to the emergency room.” 

His look of surprise turned to shock. “Huh?” it was more of a sound than a question.

By now she was at the fence, the short width of the sidewalk separating them. “You didn’t seem to want to risk the emergency room, either,” she made a vague motion with her hand to indicate his body. 

“I don’t need to go to the emergency room,” he said in a huff, obviously trying to recover.

She regarded him, the Observer in the back of her mind noting that amusement was not really the appropriate feeling to be experiencing. But, that was the only one that was there. Heal him, said the unbidden thought, and she felt that it had a little amusement in its voice, too. “What do your parents think when you come home all beat up?” she asked. “You must be black and blue under that facepaint.”

She realized too late that she hit a nerve with the boy, the look on his face went from cocky to angry. Did his parents not care? Did he not even live with his parents? She hadn’t thought he was in a gang, but he could very well be, if he was running around with ninja turtles that were trying to obtain mutagen for The Rat King. She wondered if they were still doing that, there must still be mutagen around. She wondered if The Rat King had survived the invasion. She wondered if Splinter did.

“I can do what I want,” he said, pointing his thumb at himself. “Whether I get beat up or not.”

She put her hand on the fence linking, and tilted her head to the side. “Would you like me to patch you up?” She was surprised at how motherly her voice sounded.

He scowled, “What would you do that for?”

The smile faded from her face, and she shook her head, not sure if she heard the question correctly. “Because that’s what I do,” she replied.

“You patch people up?” he took a step away from her, so that he was on the curb of the sidewalk. “Like a doctor?”

She reached down and got her medicine bag from where she’d lain it against the fence, and put the strap over her head. “I patch people up,” she echoed. “Like a doctor.” She jumped and grabbed the linking on the fence half way up, and then bounded over the top to come to the sidewalk. With her back to the fence, so she was the width of the sidewalk away, she asked again, “Would you like me to patch you up?”

He looked hesitant, as if this was some sort of trick. She couldn’t blame him, she would have thought the same thing if their positions were reversed. She had kicked him in the head and knocked him unconscious the last time she’d seen him. If she thought that Raph had the wherewithal to still be in hiding, she have thought this was a trick now, a trap to cajole her to come out where she was easily overcome. However, she was quite sure the rash turtle would have made his presence known by now. 

“You’ve got a nasty wound on your head,” she said authoritatively.

The hesitant look became one of embarrassment, but the youth shrugged. “You can take a look at my head if you want.”

She walked over to him, her bag bouncing at her hip, and motioned to the mask perched on his head. “You’ll have to take that off,” she said gently.

He removed the face mask, and Phoenix hissed with an intake of breath. “Gah! Casey! When did you get this?” She reached up and gingerly touched the edge of a nasty gash on the side of his head. It was wet with weeping lymph and blood, crusting his dark hair.

“Yesterday,” he said wincing, moving his head out of her reach.

“And you didn’t go to the emergency room?” She looked at him in disbelief and shook her head. “Sit down,” she gestured to the curb, “and I’ll get you cleaned up.” The boy did as he was told, sinking to the sidewalk. She took her bag off, and knelt beside him, taking items out. “Here,” she held a rag and a bottle of water out to him. “Wipe that stuff off of your face so I can get a better look at the rest of it.”

He took the rag and bottle, but didn’t do anything with it. Her brain went into doctor mode, feeling slowly fading away, the light that was not a light becoming brighter as she looked closer at his wound. She rinsed the side of his head with her antiseptic wash, and was impressed with the level of calm that the boy possessed. He didn’t hiss in pain, or move his head away. He winced slightly, and that was all. “Go ahead,” she urged him gently, gesturing to the rag he held.

The gash on his head was wide, and it definitely needed stitches. It was still weeping blood. He poured water on the rag, and began to wipe his face paint off. She took out her needle and horsehair, saying, “I am going to stitch this up.” She twisted her head to look him in the face disapprovingly. “It should have been stitched up yesterday.”

He shrugged.

As she began her work, she babbled, as she normally did, telling him what she was doing and asking him questions as she sent the little golden ants into his head. “I take it you are not a Purple Dragon,” she said.

“No,” he huffed. “Are you?”

She chuckled. “No,” she drawled.

“But you’ve helped them,” he said.

“I help whoever needs help. If it is a Purple Dragon, I help them. If it is a mutant, I help them. If it is a wandering boy,” she smiled at him, “then I help him.” He jerked his head slightly as the needle went through his skin. “Sorry,” she crooned. “So, who are you with?”

“I’m not with anybody, Little Mama,” he said, all peacock in his voice. “I’m a one man show.”

“Ahhh,” she nodded, eyes on his wound. “I see.”

Casey fidgeted a bit, looking down at his gloved hands and twiddling his fingers. “Who are you with?” he asked.

Who was she with? She recalled Jack Kurtzman saying, what seemed like eons ago, that she was closely affiliated with the Grey Cats. Her children certainly were. But they were The Children of the Phoenix, and she was the Phoenix herself. A different entity entirely. The realization made her slightly sad and loneliness poked at the back of her mind, far and removed. “I’m not with anybody,” she told him. “I’m a one man show.”

There was a moment of silence, as she continued to sew and he looked down at his fingers. She considered how things had changed with the Kraang gone, she was helping a boy who she’d previously beaten the snot out of, who was friends with her enemy. If he was her enemy. With the invasion, everything had changed. With their defeat, the change had not gone away, it only hung in the air, uncertain and tender.

“Were you taken by the Kraang?” she asked casually, the silence bothering her. “During the invasion?” 

“No,” he replied. “I got out of the city with my friends.”

So, he’d managed to get together with some people and flee. “Good.” 

“I guess you were alright during the invasion.” He moved his head to look at her, and they gasped in unison as he did so, him in pain and her in anticipation of it.

“Keep still,” she cooed. “I wouldn’t call it alright,” she said. “But we managed to stay hidden, and we didn’t get hurt.”

He did move his head this time, but she saw he was going to do it, and pulled her hands away with the needle. “You had to stay hidden?” His face, streaked with white and black paint, was confused.

She took the wet rag from him, and began to wipe his face, and chuckled. “We couldn’t very well stay out in the open, now, could we?”

“Why not?” he asked.

It was her turn for her face to become confused. “Because there were aliens everywhere trying to kill us?” she said apprehensively.

He turned his body fully toward her, his dark eyes wide. “The Kraang were trying to kill you?”

She shook her head, “Why would they not be trying to kill us? They were trying to kill everyone else.”

“Then why did you attack Raph and me in that alley?” he asked.

What did attacking Raph and him have to do with being hunted by the Kraang? “To give a little payback for getting our butts kicked,” she said dryly. “You were just collateral damage.” She gave him a sidelong glance, “Well, you were until you called me grandma.”

With his face paint off, she could see his cheeks turning red in the lamplight and his eyes ran up and down over her body. 

“I take it Raph recovered after getting a bath?” she asked, trying to make the talk light again. She didn’t feel like deep conversations, about good and evil, and the blurred line between them. She didn’t want to think about how she was helping someone who might, at another time, hurt her or one of her children. She didn’t want to think about how Splinter was running around in the city or sewer, an animal and not a man. Or that he might not be running at all, but be dead.

“Yeah,” Casey turned his head back around so she could continue with the cut on his head. “He was real mad about it, though.” Phoenix had to stop her ministrations while he chuckled. “He made it worse when he said he thought Medusa was kind of hot.” He seemed to regret saying it as soon as it came out of his mouth, because he turned to face her again, his eyes wide. “Uh, I mean...in an evil, snakey sort of way,” he said quickly.

She raised an eyebrow and tried very hard not to laugh. “An evil, snakey sort of way?”

The boy looked like a deer in the headlights. “I...I can’t fix this, can I?” he asked.

She let her smile out, feeling coming back to her, the doctor receding to the back of her mind. “No,” she admitted. “That’s a pretty big hole to dig out of.”

He put his hand to the back of his neck and grinned, shamefaced. “You’re OK, Little Mama,” he said.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Casey,” she replied, standing up. “You’re all done. You can cut the stitches out in ten days. Keep some Neosporin on it, and it should be fine.”

He nodded. “Well,” he looked around, and then back at her. “Thanks.”

She picked up her bag again, “You’re welcome.” Then after a moment, “Be good.”

He laughed, skates popping out of the bottom of his shoes. “I’m always good,” he said, before speeding off.

She watched him go, and when he no longer in sight, she turned to head back to the Not-Haunted Warehouse. She took out the little piece of cloth she carried about her neck on the leather thong, and the photo in her back pocket. Fingering the cloth at her throat, she thought, I should have given the photo to Casey, if he still sees Raphael. He might want the picture that his father was carrying when...he went away. She didn’t feel particularly bad that she hadn’t given it to him, though, as she folded it back up and put it in her pocket.


	122. Chapter 122

Arcos swung in the kitchen window, just as the sun had set and the far part of the sky was turning purple.  Neither Razz nor Medusa looked up from the TV.   “Where’s Mama?” he asked.

 

“You just missed her,” Medusa said, looking at her brother.  Crevan jumped in, and right after him Aries, making the bear move slightly to give them room.  “She went off to see Jack Kurtzman.”

 

“Jack Kurtzman?” Arcos asked.

 

“She’s having trouble finding any mutants,” Medusa explained, turning back to the TV.  “She thought he might know were the Mighty Mutanimals were, at least.”

 

“I still don’t know about that guy,” Razz said.

 

“You’ve never met him,” Medusa chided.

 

“Well children,” Aries clapped his three fingered hand.  “Get up, we’ve got super-hero-ing to do!”

 

“Super-hero-ing?” Razz asked, raising his eye ridges.

 

“Yeah,” said Crevan, rubbing his hands together.  “Super-hero-ing.”

 

“There are bad guys to beat, damsels to deliver, and butts to kick,” Aries punched the air.  “Everybody up.”

 

Medusa raised her head, but Razz didn’t move.

 

“You’re not serious,” Razz asked cynically.

 

“Come on, guys,” Arcos pleaded.  “We’re so bored.  Aren’t you bored?”   
  


“Yes,” Medusa said, almost as soon as the words were out of her brother’s mouth.  She slowly slithered off of the couch, unwinding herself as she did.

 

“No,” Razz looked at them like they were crazy.  “Why are you bored?”

 

“Because there’s nothing to do,” Arcos complained.  “You can only watch so much TV and play so much cards and pool.”

 

“I’ve read every book in the Cargo Bay,” Aries bleated.  

 

“Is that what Myra was fussing at you about this morning?” asked his brother.

 

“Yeah,” the ram chuckled.  “She threw a Bible at me, and told me to read that.”  He waggled his eye ridges.  “I told her I already had.”

 

“Ooo, she was mad.”  The silver fox laughed.

 

“You’ve read the whole Bible?” Razz asked, the crazy look still on his face.

 

“Yeah,” Aries said with a shrug, as if it was what everyone did.  “How can you not read it.  It’s everywhere.  We must find at least two a month in the trash.”

 

Razz shook his head, as if he’d just heard something very, very sad.

 

“Are you coming?” Medusa asked, her long body now off the couch and headed toward the kitchen window.

 

“Really?” Razz asked.  “You’re going to go out there and save people from...what?”

 

“Robbers, criminals, murderers, rapists, whatever happens to come our way,” Arcos told him.

 

“You save humans from other humans?” Razz’s voice rose a little with skepticism.   “Why in the world would you do that?”

 

Medusa turned to him, she squinted her black eyes slightly, her eye ridges came to an inverted v.  “My mother is a human,” she said quietly.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Razz stood up, his entire demeanor changing.    “Your mom doesn’t count.  She’s not really a human.”

 

“What do you mean, she’s not really a human?” Medusa brought the upper half of her body up straight, her mouth in a straight line.

 

Crevan’s eyes widened, and a smile broke out on his face.  He took a large step back toward the window.

 

“She doesn’t hang around humans, she doesn’t think like them.  She’s like a mutant.”   Razz shook his head.

 

“She’s just gone to see Jack Kurtzman, he’s a human!”  Medusa was now swaying from side to side.

 

“He...he talks to other mutants!”  Razz grasped for the words. “Humans are killing mutants, we just saw it on the news!”

 

“So only humans who talk to mutants are worth helping?”  Medusa’s voice was become more hiss like with each statement.

 

“No!”  The anole put his hands out in front of him, trying to calm the snake down.  “No, 

I mean, humans are out there killing mutants, and you want to go out and save them?”

 

“Not all humans want to hurt people, Razz,” she responded.  “It was a human who saved us when we were babies, and it was a human who took care of us and loved us.  It is a human who has fixed your hurts, how many times?   Do you know how many homeless people have seen us?  They say hello, and ask how we are, and try to give us little gifts.”

 

Arcos shuddered at the thought of some of the gifts.

 

“There are lots of people like my mother, and like Jack Kurtzman out there, who want to help people, whether they’re mutants or humans.”

 

The anole opened his mouth, and then closed it again, at a loss as to what to say.

 

She turned from him, and headed for the window.  “Go home, Razz,” she said, her voice disgusted.   Then she flung herself out of the window, up to the rooftop.

 

“Sorry, man,” Arcos muttered, following Aries and his sister.

 

“You did that yourself, Razz,” Crevan pointed at the lizard.  

 

Razz scowled, his dew flap flaring out a bright white.  “What are you doing, sucking up for something?” he spat.

 

“No, dude,” he shook his head, and put his hand on the window frame to vault out.  “I’m bored, and I've found something to do.”  Then he, too, was out the window.

 

Medusa was far ahead of the boys, who slowed down when they saw Crevan approaching.  “She’s mad,” the fox said.

 

“I imagine Razz is too,” Arcos said.

 

“He deserved what he got,” Crevan shook his head, “dumbass.”

 

Aries chuckled.

 

“How do you say dumbass in French?” Crevan asked, leaping to the next roof top.

 

“I dunno,” Aries answered.  “Mama won’t tell us.  But cretin means moron, so that sort of like a dumbass.”

 

“Medusa,” Arcos called, “wait up!”

 

She turned to answer him, but let out a high pitched, short scream, as she vaulted over a building.  She missed the other rooftop, crashing into the side, and they heard a loud thunk as she hit something on the way down.

 

“Medusa!” Aries cried, dropping to all fours, and dashing toward the alley where she’d fallen.  He leapt down, seeing the bony dog on Medusa’s back near her, riding her like she was horse.  She had a large spike sticking out of her side, blood seeping out of the wound where it was embedded in her body.  The fish with the robot legs was just landing a kick to the back part of her body, near her tail when Aries hit the ground.

 

The fish turned smiled slyly, showing his teeth.  “So glad you could drop in, Lambchop,” he said.  

 

As soon as he was on the ground, he had his axe drawn, and his body ready to fight.  “I hope you don’t mind,” he quipped, “but I brought some friends to the party.”  He raised his axe and ran at the fish as Arcos and Crevan hit the alley asphalt.

 

The fish twisted onto his hands, his robotic legs swinging in the air like windmilling arms, and blocked Aries’ axe swing with a giant metal foot.  The hit forced the axe down, and Aries maneuvered it to the side, in an attempt to hit the fish in the body.  The fish easily moved out of the way, and the axe hit the asphalt, sending sparks flying.

 

Arcos went to help Medusa, roaring as he surged forward, sledgehammer in the air.  The skeletal dog was on top of his sister, riding her like she was a mount.  He had his arms about her just under her breasts, and looked like he was trying to squeeze the air out of her.  Her too thin arms were flailing, as she tried to get them behind her to knock the dog off.  She wasn’t built that way, however, so her arms didn’t even touch him.  When she twisted to try and get him off of her back, he held on tight enough that he simply twisted with her.  His talons on his feet were digging into her body, embedded and surrounded by blood.  Blood trickled down her dark green scales where the bony spike protruded farther down her body.

 

The dog saw Arcos coming, and pulled his feet from Medusa’s body, and jumped toward the bear.  He swung his hammer, but it was too late, it missed the dog and they collided with a force that threw Arcos to the ground.  His hammer went skidding off to the side.  He raised his paw to strike at his opponent, but the dog was off of him in an instant, and turned back to Medusa.

 

Crevan leapt, cat-like, at the fish, drawing his two knives as he did.  The fish, still on his hands, whirled his metal legs, and deflected a knife strike the fox directed at him.  “Oh,” Crevan said when he landed on his feet on the other side of the fish mutant.  “It’s been awhile since I’ve had a good fight.  Nice to have a challenge.”

 

“Then prepare for your challenge to beat you,” the fish returned.

 

Crevan looked thoughtful, and then shook his head.  “It’s been awhile since that’s happened to.  You’re welcome to give it a try, though.”

 

The fish gave a yell, and hurled himself at Crevan.  The fox laughed, and soon the two of them were an intertwined blur of pink and silver, the sound of clinking and sliding metal coming from them as they stabbed and kicked at each other.

 

Medusa, now free from the confines of the bony dog, took in a deep breath of air, and immediately winced.  Filling her lungs made her body expand, and her body expanding caused the puncture wounds in her back to flare in pain.  She twisted, and grabbed at the spike that was embedded in her side.

 

“Don’t take it out!” Aries yelled, as she began to pull on it.  She looked up at him as if he were crazy, and then saw the dog flinging himself through the air back at her.  Before she could move, Aries had brandished his axe, hitting the dog.  It bounced off one of his bony body parts, but the weight of the impact sent the dog sideways, so he didn’t reach Medusa.

 

He landed on his feet, and turned to the ram.  Suddenly, bony spikes were coming toward Aries.  He bat two away with his axe, and the other two missed him, but barely.  He saw Medusa swing her tail toward the dog, batting him across the alley.  She let out a breathy scream, and her body began to undulate in the tremors that signified she was hurt.  She looked at Aries with panic in her face.

 

Her brother ran to her, his arms open.  “Get on,” he said, bending down.  She twisted her body to coil around him but grunted was unable to do so when it came to the section of her body that had the spike embedded in it.

 

The dog was bounding at them, snarling.  Aries, unable to block a strike with his sister wound about him, threw his axe at the other mutant.  The dog batted it away easily, but the impact made him veer off course, so he didn’t land on the snake as he intended.

 

Aries scooped up Medusa’s bottom half in his arms, and turned to run.  “Arcos!” he called without looking back.

 

The bear, looking for an opening in which to engage the fish again as he danced with Crevan in a whirr of blades, heard something metal hit the ground.  When he turned to look, he saw it was Aries’ axe.  He heard his brother call his name, and saw him carrying his sister in his arms.

 

In his arms.

 

No one ever carried Medusa in their arms.  They carried her with their entire body, she coiled around them as if she were going to squeeze the breath out of them.  But the ram had the entire lower half of his sister’s body in his strong arms, and he was retreating.

 

Arcos grabbed Aries’ axe from the ground, and sprinted after them.  “Crevan!”  he called.  “Dance class is over!”

 

The dog came at him, hitting him full on in the chest as he held both weapons.  They fell to the ground, somersaulting once, before landing with the bony dog on top.  He snapped at Arcos’ face, but the bear was able to bring both of his full hands up and push the dog off of him.  He saw a flash of silver grab at him.  “Come on, Big Brother,” Crevan said.  “They went that way!”

 

As he ran, Arcos heard the dog say, “Let them go!” and it struck him as odd, that they wouldn’t give them pursuit.   Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, big guy, he told himself, following close on the heels of the fox.

 

He could see both his brother and sister ahead of them as they ran.  Then, he heard police sirens.  He and Crevan exchanged panicked looks.  “We have to get out of sight,” Arcos cried.

 

Crevan pointed to a manhole cover, “Underground,” he yelled.  Aries turned, and began to run to the cover.  Arcos got it up, and Crevan jumped down into the sewer system.  

 

“Get her down,” Arcos’ grizzly voice was quiet.

 

Aries had to maneuver slowly, as the sirens got louder and louder, but his horns finally disappeared from street level, and then Arcos was behind him, the manhole cover oscillating as it fell back into place.

 

“There’s a flashlight in my vest pocket,” Aries said, trying to adjust Medusa to let Arcos get to it.  

 

The bear turned it on, and then shined it about them.  “Come on,” he motioned down the tunnel with his head.  “Let’s get away from this spot, in case they decide to look down here.”

 

“What were they doing there?” Crevan asked.  “This isn’t anywhere near their turf.”

 

Arcos shook his head, “I don’t think they’re a gang, Crevan.”

 

“What you mean, everyone is a gang, or their loners.  One of the two.”

 

“Are you crazy?” Aries said, his breathing heavy.  “What have you been eating, Medusa?  Cars?”

 

“Shut up,” she said, though she chuckled as she did.

 

“Not everyone is part of a gang, Crevan,” Aries said, adjusting his sister again.  

 

“Then what are you?” he asked.  “The Children of the Phoenix are a gang, it’s just exclusive.”

 

“We’re a family,” Arcos said.  “Big difference.”

 

“So, you’re a gang whose related to each other,” Crevan shrugged, ducking under a pipe behind the bear.  

 

“You really don’t get it,” Arcos’ voice was filled with wonder.  

 

“What’s to get?” Crevan asked.  

 

“Arcos, where are you going?” Medusa interrupted weakly.

 

“I think we’re near The Burrow,” the bear sniffed the air.  “There will be first aid materials there.”

 

“Your hideout?” 

 

“You could call it that, I guess,” Arcos turned a corner, muzzle in the air.

 

He lead them down the tunnels, turning off the flashlight when the skylights started appearing.  

 

“Wow!”  Crevan said, looking up at one of them.  “Did you guys do this?”

 

“Aries did it,” Arcos said absently.

 

“I didn’t know you could do stuff like this,” Crevan said.  “You need to put one of these in my bedroom!”

 

“Your bedroom has a window,” Aries said.

 

“But it faces the back of the building.  This way, I could get the sun when it’s high in the sky.”

 

Arcos lead them down the tunnels until they came to the two rooms where they’d spent the entire winter.    As they entered the cleaned storage room, Aries put Medusa down.    She slowly slithered so her entire body was stretched out.  “How bad is it?” she asked.

 

Aries looked her over, “You’ve got a whole bunch of puncture wounds.”  He walked over to where the stake was poking out of her.  “And this thing.”

 

“Isn’t that a puncture wound?” Crevan asked.

 

“One hell of a puncture,” Arcos mumbled, looking about the place, with it’s cans and supplies spread across the floor.

 

“Get me some clean clothes, and boil some water, and make some antiseptic wash.  There is probably a bunch in here still,”  Aries put his thick fingered hand near the large protrusion and gently pushed.

 

Medusa hissed in pain.

 

“Sorry,” he muttered.  “We’ll do the little ones first.”

 

Medusa moved, pain coursing through her.  She closed her eyes, moving only by touch in small undulations, when her body hit something.  She opened them, and picked up an empty picture frame.  “Someone’s been here,” she said, holding it up.

 

Arcos and Crevan came out from fetching things in the smaller room, and Arcos’ face became pensive.

 

“What?” the fox asked.

 

“Who do you think took the photo?” Medusa asked, as if Crevan hadn’t spoken.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Arcos’ deep voice was almost a mutter.  “We need to get you going again, and then get home.”

 

As Aries began dealing with the smaller punctures, Crevan sat down, looking about again.  “You guys didn’t do so badly for yourselves, did you?”

 

“Are you nuts?” Medusa asked.

 

“It’s nice and homey down here.  Hey,” Crevan snapped his fingers at Aries, “where did you learn to do all that?”

 

The ram poured some antiseptic on the smaller wounds before placing squares of cloth on them to cover them.  “When your mother’s a doctor,” he said, not hiding the disgust in his voice.  “you picked up a few things.”

  
  
  



	123. Chapter 123

Phoenix jumped to the rope that hung from the garden window and began to haul herself up.  The night was quiet, that time between the night life dying down and the morning movement beginning.   She climbed into the kitchen.   It always struck her that the house was reversed and for a moment she would almost panic, thinking there was something wrong with her vision or her perception until she remembered this was the Not-Haunted Warehouse.  Tonight was no different as she put down her bags and then stretched out her neck.   The Haunted Warehouse was now rubble, this not-quite right place had replaced it.

 

Go home,  said the unbidden thought. 

 

I am at home, she answered sadly.  

 

The place was quiet and empty.  She was half hoping that Medusa and Razz would wait up for her and give her a hello when she came home like she used to get when the kids were around.  She went to the bedrooms and pressed her ear against Medusa’s door.  She heard nothing from the other side.  She opened it a tad, and saw the room was empty.  They’ve gone back to the Cargo Bay, she thought disappointedly.   Her stomach grumbled and she chuckled to herself.   Better that her stomach grumble than she get dizzy from her blood sugar dropping  Time for breakfast! 

 

The room chuckled with her. 

 

Go home,  said the unbidden thought. 

 

She thought for a brief moment she had imagined the noise, that the gravelly laugh she heard was in her mind.   When it was followed by a, “Well, well, well,” she knew it was not her imagination.  She felt the blood draining from her face and her extremities.  Cotton seemed to be stuffed in her ears and her heart beat was loud in her head. 

 

There was an intruder in her home.

 

She looked around frantically and figured out that the voice was coming from the stairwell.  She ducked behind the side of the row of freestanding bedrooms in an attempt to hide.  Someone was in her home, her mind screamed.

 

“I was expecting a snake,” said the voice , that she recognized belonged the skeletal dog mutant that her children had run into several times.  “And I found a little, fluttery birdie instead.”

 

Her breath caught in her throat.  He’d come looking for Medusa?  Why would he call her a bird?  Could he not smell what she was?

 

He laughed again.  “Are you afraid?” he sang.  She couldn’t hear his footsteps and could only tell from the general direction his voice was coming from.  “I can hear your heart fluttering in your chest,” his voice was low, like a growl.  The reference to the bird became clear when her own rapid heartbeat came to her attention at his jibe.  “I can smell your fear.”

 

There was an intruder in her home, coming toward her, taunting her.  Her three kids had told her of their run ins with this mutant. If they had had a hard time fighting this man, how in the world was she supposed to be able to defend herself?

 

She heard clomping below her, and then an accented voice called, “They’re not home, Bradford!”

 

“Someone’s home,” Bradford called back.  Phoenix could hear his voice was closer to her hiding spot, which wasn’t a very good one.  She was simply pressed against the wall, which faced a 90 degree angle to the wall of the warehouse itself.  “Children of the Phoenix,” he spat the words.  “The Phoenix has another kid, it seems,”  He laughed again, viciously.  “A chicken.”

 

She heard the clomping feet come onto the last level of the warehouse.  She glanced toward the kitchen window.  If she could only get over there, she could run.  She was sure she could outrun these things, or at least outleap them.  But she didn’t think she could get to the window from the far end of the bedrooms.  She was facing the gymnasium and her mind frantically went through what might be in that area of the house that she could use for a rope to get out of the window at that end of the floor. 

 

There was nothing over there.

 

“Your fear smells sweet,” she could hear the voice coming closer to her, slowly, and with every word her heart beat faster.   “Your heartbeat is music to my ears.  Beat faster for me.”  His voice had turned from vicious to soft, like a someone urging a lover to an act they were not yet ready for.  She fought tears terror and choked down a sob.

 

There were enemies in her home.

 

Go home , said the unbidden thought.

 

He is doing this purposely to get you off-guard, she told herself.  This is a classic scare tactic.  However, telling herself that didn’t make the fear go away.  

 

The clomping had stopped.  The other person has stopped walking, she noted.  As soon as the thought crystallized in her mind, the giant, skeletal dog appeared as if out of nowhere, he made no sound at all as he turned the corner.  His hand moved so fast, she could barely register it before it hit her, and threw her across warehouse floor.

 

With what seemed an amazing speed for a mutant so big, she saw him in the air jumping toward her.  She managed to roll away from him and he changed direction in the air.  That isn’t possible, her brain said as she scrambled to her feet, pain shooting through her side where he’d smacked her.  He landed right next to her head, just as she got a foothold and bolted toward the gymnasium.

 

She heard crashing behind her, “Don’t fly away so soon, little birdie,” the gravelly voice chuckled.  “I haven’t heard you sing yet.”  Then, right next to her, a hand fell, breaking a wooden board on the floor where she had been only a moment before.

 

She had to get out of there.

 

She couldn’t get to the window.  Even if she could, she couldn’t get out of the window, there was no rope on this side of the warehouse.  She twisted out of the way of another strike, and it hit her in the arm as she failed, causing a jerk of pain up her neck and down to her fingertips.  It sent her spinning and she landed on her back, near the pommel horse.

 

Above her, in the air duct, was an open grate.  She had never been in the air duct in the warehouses around, but they had to eventually lead to a way out of the warehouse.

 

She leapt up, reaching for the pommel horse, and resisting the urge to spin on it, as she had done for all of her life.  Instead, she stood on it, the gravest of sins, and jumped up toward the hole in the large piping.  She felt the pommel horse collapse underneath her as Bradford brought a chop down on it.

 

Scrambling through the pipe, she heard, “You think you can get away?” and then a great dent appeared in front of her.  It wasn’t enough to block the way, so she kept crawling.  Her legs would not move as fast as her brain was telling them, and her hands were all but trying to grab at the smooth metal beneath her to pull her forward.  Another dent appeared at her side, and then another just at her feet, bucking them upward.  

 

She put them on the dent, and pushed herself as hard as she could, sliding on the metal sheets, and finally reaching the pipe that lead down.  Then she was falling, so fast that she cried out.  Then the pipe spit her out, and she landed in a shallow pool of water.

 

The basement, which she had never been to in this warehouse,  was flooded.  The water broke her fall slightly, but not enough to prevent her from banging into the floor.  She stood up, gasping for breath and dripping.  The dog and clomper would have to come down the stairs to get her.  She’d bought herself some time.  

 

She heard noises above her, and worked her way through the knee-high water toward an exit.  An exit?  Where was the exit?!  Her wet hair whipped as she looked around the basement, trying to figure out how she was going to get out of the warehouse.   She saw the little window, right at ground level, and assessed whether she could fit through it or not.  The noises above her got louder, and she waded, with a painful slowness, over to the wall, and leapt for the window.

 

The window didn’t budge.

 

No, no, no, no! her mind chanted, as she tugged at the window with one hand, holding onto the ledge with another.  The voices and clomping feet came closer, causing her heart rate to quicken even more.  She climbed onto the window sill and, using both of her hands, she heaved with her legs to get the window to open.

 

It did, just as she heard splashing behind her.  She didn’t look back, but dived out of the tiny window, half expecting her hips to get stuck in it, but was surprised when it was her leg that burst in pain.  She twisted, the metal sill scraping her side, and grabbed at the frame to keep herself from being dragged back in the basement by the dog mutant.  She kicked at his hand with her free foot, and he grunted in annoyance.  When he swiped at her leg with his free hand, his face drew near enough that she was able to clock in him the jaw.  While The Phoenix was a small woman, her legs were by no means weak.  A kick to the face hurt even the large mutant grabbing her leg, so that he yelped and let her go.  She scrambled out of the window and sprinted across the street.  Lifting the grate to the storm drain, she jumped down into the sewer tunnels, and began to ran down the now familiar passageway.

 

She might be able to get some distance between them and her, if they chose to follow her.  She leaned against the concrete wall, breathing heavily.

 

Go home, said the unbidden thought.

 

“I was at home!” she said out loud.  Her voice echoed down the tunnels, and regretted having said it.   Now, there were intruders in her home, waiting for her daughter to return.

 

She continued to breath heavily, now from fear rather than exertion, and tried to grab onto a thought, as they went zooming by in her mind.  If Medusa wasn’t there, she was probably at the Cargo Bay.  If she was at the Cargo Bay, she probably wouldn’t be coming home anytime soon.   Phoenix was the only one who would be there, so if they hadn’t chased her into the sewer, and it didn’t sound like they had, they would eventually get tired of waiting and leave.

 

Right?

 

Go home, the unbidden thought told her.

 

She couldn’t go home.  Her home was compromised.  Her enemies knew where they were, could come whenever they wanted to.  They couldn’t stay there any longer.  She couldn't stay there any longer.

 

As she calmed down, getting her breath back, she noted her dry mouth, and reflexively put her hand to her hip to get a bottle of water out of her bag. But she didn't have the bag, she'd taken it off when she'd gotten home.  She still had her knife, though, and her slingshot, and a sopping wet bag of crimped bullet shells. 

 

Her wet clothes and hair made her mouth water.  Goodness she was thirsty.   Her stomach grumbled, and she shook her head in quiet disbelief.   Really? Now?  With that thought, a weariness overtook her. If she hadn't been attacked, she would probably have fallen asleep  by now, she mused, putting her head back to rest on the concrete wall. 

 

Pushing herself up, she began to slosh through the sewer tunnel.  Her body started to ache down her side where Bradford had hit her.  She’d landed on the same side when the pipe had spit her out.  The Burrow would have food and water.  She could rest there , too, and regroup. 

 

Who knew that little hole in the sewer would come in so handy? 

 


	124. Chapter 124

“Ah, you’re so heavy!” Crevan complained with part of Medusa’s tail draped over his back.

“Shut up, man,” said Aries.  “We carry all of her all the time.”

“You’re twice my size!”

“Both of you shut up,” Arcos said, ducking underneath some piping.

“Careful!” Medusa hissed, “that hurt.”

“Sorry,” muttered Aries.

The going was slow back to the Not-Haunted Warehouse, as all three of the young men carried the back of Medusa’s body, so her cleaned wound wouldn’t slide in the sewer sludge.    Her top half was in front, so that none of the boys had to carry her full weight.  Although, it appeared that Crevan would not have been able to do so anyway.

“I never realized how fast you were until you were so slow,” Crevan noted.

Arcos and Aries laughed.  “We noticed that too!  Back when during the invasion.”

At the mention of the invasion, the group fell silent.  Arcos noticed it always happened when they were around any of the Grey Cats.  The thought of it brought a slight veil over everyone present, no matter who the Grey Cat was, and seemed to muddy the air slightly with a feeling that was almost guilt and almost apathy.  The feeling unsettled him, much like many of the feelings he had during the invasion itself.  He couldn’t grasp it and he didn’t like that.  It swirled in his head, like a dark blob dancing with a gray blob, but the light of white could not be found in it anywhere.

“We’re almost home,” he said quietly to the back of Medusa’s head.  He was the closest to it, first in line after his sister.

She nodded.  “It hurts on the inside of me,” she whined.

“I bet it does,” Aries replied.  “That thing was big and deep.”

“I didn’t know he could do that,” Medusa said.  “They just shot out of him, pieces of him, and then they grew back.”

“We’re almost home,” Arcos said again, gently putting her down and opening the manhole cover near their home.

The going was still slow as they inched toward the warehouse and seemed to slow more with every step.  “You OK?” Aries asked his sister.

“I will be when we get home,” her voice wasn’t much more than a hiss.

They rounded a corner, and the Not-Haunted Warehouse came into view.  “We’ll go up the stairs,” Arcos told them.

Medusa shook her head.  “I would rather go up the wall,” she said, “and then make my way over to the window.  That way, there are bumps.”

Arcos looked at her for a moment, then nodded his head.  “We’ll come up behind you, in case you fall.”

She began to inch up the wall and chuckled.  “You can’t catch me if I fall.  I’ll squish you.”

“That’s not normally something a woman admits to,” Aries teased. 

“It is when the woman can kick all your asses with her eyes closed,” Medusa returned.

“Very true,” said Arcos.

They watched her slither over, and when she was below the window, the three young men jumped the fence into the garden to climb the rope up.  Medusa was the first in the window, and she took to slithering in it carefully, hissing in pain as she did.  “Oooo,” she whined.  “That zombie hurt me!”

“Good,” came a gravelly voice from the window above.  “We’re a little closer to even.”

Arcos heard a click and then his sister let out a scream.  It was a real scream, not a cry or a hiss, but a high pitched emptying of her lungs.   The bear, who was last in line, almost jumped off of the rope in an attempt to get up to the window faster.  Aries and Crevan were in within the blink of an eye, but he felt it was too slow.  Arcos swung himself in, drawing his battle hammer while in midair.  Aries was engaged with the bony dog mutant, his axe arching and clashing with the hard material of the dog’s body.  Crevan had once again taken on the fish mutant with the robotic legs, they were already involved in the complicated dance of twirling and weaving about each other.  Medusa lay prostrate on the floor, her black eyes wide and her inner eyelid completely drawn over them.  She had a metal collar on her neck. 

She wasn’t moving.

Even in the winter, at her coldest, Medusa did not not move.  She might have moved sluggishly, but she blinked her outer eyelids, she twitched slightly in an attempt to be warm, her tongue darted out occasionally, even in her sleep.  But this, this was an entirely still snake.

Oh my god, Arcos thought, she’s dead.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, Medusa tried to sit up.  As she did, the collar she was wearing let out an electric spark that lit its way down her body, sending the snake to the floor again.  The movement knocked Arcos out of his stupor, relief hitting him like a physical thing.  With a roar, he ran at the dog.

His hammer hit the mutant square in the shoulder as he was avoiding a strike from Aries.  He let out a whelp but jumped at the same time, so he landed a little ways away, but did not lose his footing.   He shot two of his bony protrusions at the brothers, both dodged out of the way.

Behind him, Arcos heard a cry and then a thunk.  He turned his head and saw Crevan laying limp on the floor against the bedrooms’ wall.  The fish, now unoccupied, leapt into the air and with one of his large, robotic feet outstretched, aimed for Arcos’ head.  The bear mutant swung his hammer like a baseball bat, colliding with the ankle of the fish as it came toward him.  The fish went careening off to the side.  Suddenly, Arcos felt a sharp pain in his thigh and looking down, saw a smaller version of one of the bony spikes that had impaled his sister imbedded in his leg.

“Be careful, you idiot,” said the fish, standing up, “Master Shredder wants them alive.”

“I’m not gonna kill ‘em,” said the dog.  “Just hurt them a little bit.”

Aries, now the only one uninjured, swung again at the dog.  The skeletal mutant easily jumped out of the way, and even laughed.  “Not so tough without your snake to help you, eh?”

Arcos glanced from Aries, to Crevan, to the fish now coming at him again, this time with a butterfly knife drawn.  He took a fighting stance, pain radiating down his leg and up into his hip.   The fish spun as he approached him, a quick series of movements that reminding him of his mother on the rare occasion when she was breakdancing.  He backed up toward the bedroom walls and swayed his hammer in front of him like a pendulum.  Gaining momentum, he clashed with a robotic leg as it tried to strike him but then felt a sting in his forearm.  The fish had slashed him with his knife.

However, the slicing motion gave Arcos’ hammer an in on the return wave and managed to hit the fish in the side.  He let out a grunt as he went flying toward the gymnasium.

While the dog was not entirely right, he was correct enough.  Arcos couldn’t keep this up the spike in his leg, and there was no way Aries could take on both of these fighters alone.  Without Medusa, they were outmanned.

“Aries,” the bear reached down and hoisted Crevan over his shoulder.  “Retreat!”

“What?!” the ram’s voice was at least two octaves higher than normal.

Arcos made a dash for the window, “Retreat, Aries!” he yelled, “Now!”  He made it to the window before the fish was able to recover, grabbing the upper sill, and swinging up to the roof.

He heard Aries behind him, his hoof-like feet clinking as he leapt over the roofs toward the Cargo Bay.  “What are you doing?” he yelled.  “We can’t leave her there!”

Arcos didn’t answer, he was running as fast as he could with his injured leg, and Crevan on his shoulder.  His brother caught up to him, his golden eyes split in two with his horizontal pupils only slits.  “What is the matter with you?!”

The bear shook his head, he was slowing considerably.  Aries grabbed the still unconscious Crevan, carrying him like a sack of potatoes.  “What is the matter with you?!” he yelled again.

“I have a spike sticking out of my leg,” he snarled back.

Aries looked down at his thigh, and then back to his face.  “That’s not what I meant.”

Arcos slowed some more, looking behind him, and seeing they were not being followed.  He stopped, looking down at his thigh, when he suddenly tackled.  Aries had put Crevan down and lunged at his brother.

Arcos growled as the two of them rolled, the spike stabbing pain through his leg. 

“You left her!” Aries yelled, landing on top of his brother when the roll ended.  He pulled his fist back, and it collided with Arcos’ muzzle.  “You left her!”

Arcos pulled his legs up, kneeing Aries in the rear.  The ram wasn’t expecting it, and he tumbled forward, allowing Arcos to wiggle out from under him.  The bear wiped his numb nose and noticed blood on his fur.  “Man!” he growled.  “What did you do that for?”

“You left her!” Aries huffed.  The wool near his eyes was getting darker as tears saturated it.  “You left her there.”

Arcos pinched his nose, growling again.  “They said they wanted us alive,” he said.  “That means they aren’t going to kill Medusa.”

“So what?!”

“We know where they’re going to take her,” he replied.  “We can rescue her.”  He grabbed his thigh, “When I don’t have a spike sticking out of my leg!”

Aries seemed to calm down significantly at that, though his face was still distraught.  “What are they going to do to her?” he asked, a slight baa in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Arcos let go of his nose to see if it had stopped bleeding.  “But they aren’t going to kill her.”

Aries looked past his brother to where he had put down Crevan.  “He’s a lightweight, isn’t he?” he said quietly.  “Mama hasn’t been knocked unconscious by any of these people.”

“No accounting for size,” Arcos limped over to the silver fox, and grabbed his muzzle with a paw.

“I guess not,” Aries crouched down next to him and pried open one of Crevan’s eyelids.  “His pupils are responsive,” he said.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he doesn’t have a concussion,” Aries replied.  He went to the fox’s legs and scooped his arm under them, bringing them up.  “He just got the wind knocked out of him.”

“He’s been out for a while for having the wind knocked out of him,” Arcos said, wincing and holding his leg.

“Obviously, he’s a wimp,” was his brother’s reply.  He reached over with his free hand and vigorously rubbed Crevan’s sternum.

The fox groaned and his eyes flittered open.

“You hurt?” Aries asked unceremoniously.

He put his hand to where the ram had rubbed him.  “Except for someone trying to remove the fur on my chest, I think I’m OK.”  He looked around, “Where are we?”

“On our way to the Cargo Bay,” Arcos said, holding his hand out to help Crevan sit up.

“Where’s Medusa?”

Aries glared at his brother, “Arcos left her.”

“Dude,” Crevan rubbed his head, “was it that bad?”

“What do you mean, was it that bad?!” Aries dropped his legs hard on the roof, so that the fox winced.  He turned to Acros. The bear didn’t know he was paying attention to him any longer.   Aries huffed, “Stop fucking with your leg!”  The bear snapped his paws up in the air in a gesture of surrender.  Except for the swearing and deeper voice, he sounded exactly like their mother.  The ram turned back to Crevan, “He,” he pointed a thick finger at Arcos, “left Medusa over there with those people!”

“Last I saw, if we stayed we were all going to be left fur rugs,” Crevan snapped.

“Last I saw, you were laying out flat on the floor,” Aries huffed.  “Even my mom doesn’t get laid out flat on the floor and she’s half your size!”

“I know,” Crevan drew at the words, “she doesn’t fight in close combat with anybody.  If all I did was throw bullets at people, I wouldn’t get laid out, either!”

“Guys, stop it,” Arcos said unenthusiastically, backing up a little, “we need to get to the Cargo Bay.”

“When she does do close combat with someone, she’s smart enough not to get hit!” Aries ignored his brother completely.

“She has Medusa to save her ass!” Crevan yelled, standing up.

Aries stood up with him, a fresh set of tears wetting the wool on his cheeks.

“Are you crying?” Crevan asked disgustedly.

“Dude...” Arcos took a large step back, shaking his head in disbelief.  He winced when he put weight on his hurt leg.

Aries answered the fox with a fist to the cheek.  The fox went flying across the roof, banging against the storage shed, and slithered to the ground, unconscious again.  The ram went over to him and flipped him over his shoulder, and jumped to the next roof.

Arcos followed him, “He might have a concussion this time,” the bear said gently.

“If he’s lucky,” Aries muttered.


	125. Chapter 125

Aries dumped the unconscious Crevan on the concrete floor of the Cargo Bay, the scowl on his face speaking volumes. He had to actively fight the urge to jump on the fox like a toddler breaking someone’s toy. He huffed deep in his chest and many of the Grey Cats that were standing nearby inched away.

“Comment?” asked Chategris. “What happened to all of you?”

“We got in a fight,” Arcos said, limping.

“What is that?” Chategris looked up at the bear alarmed, pointing to the spike in his leg.

“It’s an ice cream cone,” Aries said, giving Crevan a shove with his foot.

Chategris growled quietly at the ram. Aries glared at him as he walked over to his brother.

“He got knocked out in the fight?” Klashtooth asked, walking up behind his leader. He said the words quickly, as if he wanted the conversation to steer in a certain direction.

“No,” Aries said, “I punched him out.”

“Oh,” Klashtooth said quietly, his large brown eyes looking anywhere but at the unconscious sliver fox.

“Is my mother here?” Arcos asked. He let out a grunt and slid down to sit on the floor.

“Non,” Chategris answered. “It is during the day, she is not at home?”

Aries reached his brother, mumbling to a mutant he passed, “Get me some medical stuff.” He was really hoping that his mother would be here to do this, these were big injuries he was dealing with, and he didn’t know if he was dealing with them right. He felt tears welling up his eyes again at the thought of sewing up Medusa in The Burrow.

“No,” Aries told him, taking his brother’s pant leg and ripping it by the spike. “God, I hope not.”

“There would have been some indication if she was,” Arcos replied, closing his eyes and leaning his head against the wall. “She wasn’t there.”

“What happened?” Myra came running up, her dark eyes wide, her long ears flowing behind her like hair.

“We got attacked at the warehouse,” Aries said quietly. He felt a slight release of some tension at Myra’s arrival and his body warmed when she touched his back with a flat hand. “Will you hand me some of those bandages?” he asked, motioning to the medical supplies. Myra looked at him a moment, a slightly put out look on her face, but then she reached over and handed them to him.   The warm feeling he’d had only a moment ago was replaced by a different kind of warmth that didn’t feel anywhere near as nice and fuzzy.

Crevan moaned in the background. “Son of a bitch punched me.”

“Shut up, Crevan,” Arcos’ grizzly voice carried easily through the open space, despite his closed eyes and pained expression.

“Told you he didn’t have a concussion,” Aries muttered. He grabbed the spike with both of his hands, and yanked it out with no indication that he was going to do so.

Arcos screamed and writhed and called his brother a nasty name.

“Stop being a baby,” Aries said, putting pressure on the wound with the bandages. “Medusa didn’t make this much of a fuss, and her injuries were worse.”

“She whined the whole way back,” Crevan had come up to them, crouched down, and put his hand on Arcos’ shoulder. “Hang in there, Big Brother.”

“Where is she?” Myra asked, looking around.

Aries felt the tears begin to soak his wool again. That was his one real weakness, he felt, that he couldn’t stop the tears when they came. And they came often. Like his mother, he was a crier, his emotions running close to the surface and he being able to do little to control them.   Tears came quickly and usually left quickly, but he had to keep blinking his eyes to clear his vision in order to deal with his brother’s wounds. “We left her,” he said gruffly.

“We were outmanned,” Arcos said. “And they said they wanted us alive.”

The Cargo Bay was quiet, the muffled voices that had been speaking dying down at the announcement.   “We’re going to rescue her,” Aries said vehemently, stringing some horsehair through a needle.

“Who took her?” Chategris asked.

“Those ninjas we fought,” Crevan explained. “Two of them were waiting for us at the warehouse.”

“You cannot rescue her like that,” Chategris gestured to the bear’s leg. “You will not be able to walk when he is done with you.”

Aries shot him a nasty glance before going back to stitching his brother’s leg. “Someone needs to find our mother,” he said.

No one said anything.

Aries let the silence hang for a few moments, glancing up at his brother to see his head still back, his eyes still closed, a pained expression still on his face. When he finished his stitching, he turned to face the open part of the Cargo Bay and huffed angrily, his nostril flaring with the outtake of breath. “ **Someone** ,”he said sharply, “needs to find my mother!”

“Where are we supposed to find her?” Klashtooth asked. “She could be anywhere.”

Aries looked around, thinking of a proper retort, and notice a conspicuous absence. “Where’s Razz?” he asked harshly.

The faces around him contorted to confusion. “He hasn’t been here for days,” Klashtooth said. “He’s been at the Warehouse.”

Arcos opened his eyes, and cursed. “We have to wonder what’s happening to him, too?”

Chategris made a noise, one of those classically French ones that Aries’ mother made when she was very angry. He motioned to some of the mutants by him, “Go find him,” he said.

“What about my mother?” Aries insisted. “Who is going to find her?”

“You are,” Chategris said peevishly. “The Children of the Phoenix have the best chance of finding The Phoenix, non?” At Aries glare, he continued, “He cannot do it,” he waved dramatically at Arcos. “That leaves you.”

Aries didn’t want it to leave just him. He wanted someone else to go and look for his mother. He wanted to stay with his brother, he wanted to go back and get his sister. But he knew that the two mutants would be long gone by now.  He huffed again, and then looked at Myra, as if she might have some answer for him. She simply looked at him with her big, brown dog eyes and a blank expression.

He turned to Arcos. “If she didn’t come here, maybe she went to the Inleters,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few days”.

Arcos nodded.

“You know what to do about your leg?” Aries asked lowly.

Arcos opened his eyes and chuckled, “What do I need to do about it doctor?”

Aries huffed. “Stay off of the leg. Keep the wound clean. Wrap in the bag of herbs labeled “healing poultice” in the apothecary.”

“Yay for Mama and her many stashes of herbs, huh?”

“Hey,” Aries said indignantly. “We helped stash those herbs too.”

###

The Phoenix guzzled down her fifth glass of water, cool and sweet tasting, from the filter system that Aries had set up months ago when they first found The Burrow.   Just like the last time she had been here, the place was strewn with throwing stars, little razorblades, and bits of maroon cloth.   She noticed the medical kit on the floor and walked over to it. She did not remember it being in this spot last time. But maybe it had been. It wasn’t as if she was paying that close attention to things the last time she’d been down here. It had been rummaged through and used. She sighed, and dropped her shoulders. She couldn’t stay here, either. Someone else had come and used the medical kit. That meant they knew it was here, and might come back. She left the kit as she found it. The person who used it last might need it again, and there was no reason for her to deny them medical help, no matter who they were.

Medical help...she quickly scanned her body to see if she needed any medical help, but she was fine, only sore from being bounced around. How long had it been since she’d been able to give any medical help? She couldn’t find anyone! It was as if the mutants in the city all disappeared.   Even her children were no longer with her.

 _Go home_ , the unbidden thought told her.

“Shut up,” she said out loud.

 _Go home_ , the thought was pleading, like a mother asking for her child to return to her arms.

She felt tears welling up in her eyes and she looked about the room, each little sharp object on the floor seeming to stab at her. “I can’t go home,” she said quietly. She that sudden urge to take the photo of the four turtles out of her back pocket. She unfolded it, it now had four distinct lines on it, pointing in the cardinal directions.

The bittersweet hand of nostalgia took hold of her own as she held the photo in her hands. Despite not having met the four boys in a position that would have been anything like what they were feeling when the photograph was taken, she knew that Splinter had. And she missed him, whenever she thought of him, she missed him terribly.

 _Safe_ , said the unbidden thought.

I didn’t keep him safe, she thought of the one face that wasn’t in the photo.

 _Go home._ The words bounced in her head. _Safe_. She continued to stare at the photo, as if in it she might divine some sort of clarity.   _Friends,_ said the thought, with a breathy feeling. _Father._

That is what Karai had said when she’d followed her to The Back-Up Burrow. She gasped as the words that seemed so unrelated finally fell into place. The Back Up Burrow was safe!   It was always meant to be safe. No one knew where it was, it was just as spacious as their warehouse, once parts of it had been cordoned off, and Aries said he could easily make it difficult for an intruder to enter.

 _Go home,_ said the unbidden thought.

She laughed, if she didn’t laugh, she would cry. She felt so stupid, her adrenaline rush was all gone now, leaving the lethargy that follows a frightening encounter. She looked back down at the medical kit, opened and used, and shook her head. How many other things had she been stupid about that she wasn’t aware of?

She picked up on the little razor blade looking things that Splinter had deposited on the floor when...leaving, and placed it in the medical kit. She’d found , with the one that Raph had deposited in Medusa’s side what seemed like an eternity ago, that they made a good scalpel blade. Then she rearranging the items and closed the box.

Folding the photo and putting it back in her pocket, she let out a loud sigh to the empty room. “I guess it’s time to go home,” she said.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       


	126. Chapter 126

The electric shocks from the collar that the bony dog had managed to get around her neck did not render Medusa unconscious, though she wished it had.  Whenever she moved, the thing went off, sending pain like she’d never felt before, and hoped never to feel again, coursing through her body and rendering her immobile.  She managed to get her inner eyelid closed during one of the shocking episodes.  As soon as she able to move again, and did so, another shock was sent through her, and she was again paralyzed on the floor.

 

She wanted to scream for her brothers to run, especially after Crevan was knocked unconscious.    But trying to do anything was like moving in quicksand, it had the opposite effect of what she was hoping for.  When Arcos had finally called a retreat, instead of her fear becoming more ramped up, relief coursed through her.  They might have gotten her, but they didn’t the rest of her family.

 

She was pleased that Bradford had trouble carrying her inert form back to the Pretty Building.  Her body was wrapped around the dog mutant in a multitude of ways, as if he were wearing a feather boa.  She would have chuckled in her mind at the irony of that, if she wasn’t in such deep trouble.

 

She wasn’t scared.  She was fully confident that when she got her movement back, she’d be able to, at the very least, get away, if not crush a few of these goons on the way out.  This was the first time in her life she’d been bested and she’d been taken completely by surprise.  As she’d made her way into the window, going slowly to keep from scraping against the sill, Bradford has appeared out of nowhere and clamped the collar on her.   It explained why he had changed his tactics when they’d fought in the alley.  He was probably on her back to clamp the thing on then.  She has managed to thrash before the first shock, sending the mutant ninja across the room.   After that, all she could do was watch what was happening from whatever viewpoint she had after falling to the floor.   Now that surprise was no longer in the equation, all she needed was her mobility.

 

"Uhg,  she's heavier than she looks,"  Bradford complained. 

 

The fish chuckled, "It's the only way you are going to get a woman to lay on you.   Enjoy it while you can." 

 

Bradford struck at the fish mutant, causing Medusa to fall slightly so that he had to readjust her.   

 

The fish glowered at him, but then laughed as Medusa’s tail fell on the ground.  “Is she too much for you to handle?”

 

“Shut up, Xever,” he growled, picking up her tail and draping it over his neck.

 

As they approached their destination, it looked just as it had two years ago. You’d think they’d get that broken window fixed, she thought absently as she saw it on the top floor through the haze of her inner eyelids.  

 

Being carted through the building was a surprise.  The place was deceptively large.  It seemed to be comprised of different floors and each floor seemed to have its own purpose.  But unlike the Haunted Warehouse, which had kept its original feel, only with each floor to be filled with different purposes, this place had been completely repurposed for whatever was going on the floor it inhabited.  

 

She was carried down stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs.  Good God, how many floors does this place have? she thought, tuning out Bradford and Xever’s arguing.  They had argued the entire way to this place.  She wanted to tell them to shut up, but was afraid she’d be shocked if she moved her mouth.

 

They finally emerged in a large room lined with terraria.  In the center was a large fan, so loud that it was now difficult to hear her two captors sniping at each other.  Near the fan was what looked like a control center.  She could see a body at the controls in her peripheral vision, but could not see who or what it was.  Bradford carted her toward one of the glass cages, readjusting her again over his shoulders.

 

They can’t be putting me in a terrarium, she thought.  I’m not an animal.  But as they approached an empty glass box, the front of it came down, like the opposite of a movie screen ascending, and Bradford dumped her on the floor.  Take the collar off, she wanted to hiss.  Take the collar off and see what I do to you.

 

But they didn’t take the collar off.  She saw the glass begin to rise and Bradford stepping over it as it did.  She raised her body and launched it in his direction, but the electric shock that ran through her made every muscle in her body twitch.  Bradford launched a kick at her, her brain telling her that her eyes must be seeing wrong.  He had been facing the other way, leaving, and all of sudden his leg was making contact with her body, and she was flying across the cage.  She couldn’t feel herself hitting the floor, the shocks continued to flow from her neck down the rest of her..

 

Then the glass was fully extended and the electrical current stopped.  She heard the collar make a clicking noise, fear gripping her as to what that meant.  When nothing happened, she moved the tip of her tail.  

 

No shock went through it.

 

She bolted upright and rammed herself against the glass.  It shuddered, but nothing else happened.  She did it again, and again, and again, breaking her stitches open, so that blood splattered on the transparent wall, but the wall held fast.  Her body began to undulate out of her control from the pain, a movement not so unlike that of the electric shock.

 

“Is that gonna hold her?” Bradford asked.

 

A fly mutant came into view, hovering over the floor.  “Yezzzz,” he said agitatedly.   She surmised that it was the same person who was at the control panels when they’d entered.

 

Once the tremors in her body stopped, she railed against the glass again.  It would  not hold her.  It would not hold her if she had to bang against it for days.  Bradford, Xever, and the fly watched her like they were watching a show on a television screen.  Her body began to tremor again, so that she had to stop thrashing against the glass, this time the pain was accompanied by a wave of nausea.  

 

“She’zzzz big,” the fly noted.

 

“Yeah,” Bradford muttered, “because I was lying.”  Suddenly the dog dropped to the floor in a bow, as did the fish, and the fly tried to do something similar.  

 

“You only captured one?” a deep voice came from somewhere out of her view.  It did not sound happy.

 

“They had another mutant with them,” Bradford explained with a whine.  “He kept Xever busy so that I was handling all three of them.”

 

“You were handling all three of them?” Xever retorted.  “You slapped the collar on her immediately,” he threw his head in Medusa’s direction, “you weren’t deal with her at all.”

 

“Enough!” the man with the deep voice finally stepped where Medusa could see him.  He was the man in the armor that she’d seen during the invasion.  He had been imposing from the far distance she’d witnessed him, up close, he was down right scary.  He wore a helmet that showed only his eyes, and one of them was white, indicating he was blind in it.

 

He regarded her and Medusa could see no emotion in his eyes.  They were empty, showing nothing.  He stood unnaturally still, all the way to not blinking.   “You are Medusa,” he finally said.

 

She didn’t answer him.

 

His eyes turned menacing.  “Why were you after my daughter?”

 

Medusa blinked, her body swaying in her characteristic threatening way.  “What?” she hissed.

 

“Why were you chasing my daughter?”  He said each word very precisely.

 

She shook her head.  “I haven’t been chasing anyone.  Your goons,” she waved her hand in Bradford’s direction, “have been chasing  me .”

 

He took a step in the direction of the glass, his presence was menacing.  She tried to control her body rippling as opposed to her predatory swaying, but a jolt of pain prevented her from doing so.  “You were encountered chasing my daughter, Karai, on several occasions.  Why?”  His voice was frightening, it made her skin clench.

 

“Karai?” she asked quietly, her tremors stopping.  She did not, however, begin swaying again.  Karai was this man’s daughter?  That didn’t seem possible.  She didn’t get the same feeling from Karai as she did from this man.  He felt like something out of a nightmare.  “She…” Medusa shook her head, she didn’t even know how to begin explaining it to this man.  “She seemed sad and lonely.”

 

The man looked at her for a long time, silent.  She was at a complete loss as to what she should do.  It was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to break the glass of the cage, she wasn’t being attacked or taunted by any of these people, and the human was just staring at her like he coutl divine some sort of secret if he looked at her long enough.  His look was frightening in a way she’d never experienced before.  It reminded her of a monster from a fairy tale, though she was the one usually considered the monster.  She couldn’t take his scrutiny any longer, and asked in a timid voice, “What do you want with me?”

 

The man gave a derisive sound, as if the question wasn’t worthy of his time.  “I want nothing from you,” he said.  “I want your mother to come and rescue you.”

 

Medusa was astounded speechless.  He wanted her mother to come and rescue her?  “Why?” she asked out loud, she could hear the temblor in her voice.  “What would you want with a little human woman?”

 

“I don’t care if she’s human, or a snake, or a bull frog,” the man said.  “I care about what she can do.”  He raised his eye ridges, for he didn’t have any eyebrows.

 

“You need someone healed?” Medusa shook her head, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  “All you had to do was ask, and she would have helped you.”  How many unsavory people had her mother already helped through the years, criminals, derelicts, homeless?  If this man wanted to capture her mother, the woman wouldn’t have a chance.  And she was out there by herself somewhere, without her children to protect her.  She felt tears coming to her eyes,a sense of failure swelling in her breast, and she backed away from the glass a little.  The movement made her aware of the blood that was seeping from her broken stitches.    

 

The man laughed, and it was more frightening than any of his words so far. “I doubt it,” he said, turning and walking away.

 

The fish looked at her and chuckled, “I hear your mother is a mamba,” he said.  “Does she play a flute and charm you?”

 

Medusa hissed, the feeling of failure replaced with a surge of anger. 

 

Xever walked away, but the fly and the dog remained.  “What do you have planned for her,” Bradford said, keeping his eyes on the snake.

 

“Zzzzzhheee is uzelezz to me,” the fly replied.  

 

Bradford laughed and came toward the glass. He tapped on it with his knuckles and a sick grin grew on his canine face.  “I’ll come back for you, pretty girl.”  His voice was filled with satisfaction.

 

Medusa hissed at him, she could feel her instincts taking over.  She had nowhere to run, she had no one to fight, she was trapped in a cage like an animal.  

 

Bradford laughed and walked away.

 

Medusa glared at the fly until he flew away a few moments later.  Then she curled up into a coil, and tucked her head in the middle, closing her inner eyelids in the darkness of her cinnamon smelling body.      

 

  
  



	127. Chapter 127

Arcos decided, after one day of Aries being gone, that he wanted his Mama.  Being injured with only The Grey Cats as nurses was highly sub-par, in his opinion. He didn’t realize what good care his family had taken of him until he was left to his own devices.When he was injured, one of them anticipated his basic needs, like needing something to drink or going to the bathroom.  If he was sleeping or woozy, then one of them would dress his wounds.  His mother would call him Teddy Bear, his brother would shoot the breeze with him, his sister would wrap herself around him to keep him upright if he needed it.

 

None of that happened in The Cargo Bay.

 

The search party for Razz had come up empty.  He was, apparently, at none of his normal haunts, nor was he back at the Warehouse.  It worried Arcos.  The anole could be dead in a gutter somewhere, or kidnapped by those two ninja mutants for all he knew.   It did not seem to worry anyone else.

 

His rejoiners for a rescue party for his sister were met with the refrain, “We have to wait for your mamman to return.  Then we can formulate a plan.”

 

The reply left him feeling weak and helpless.  He was completely left to his own devices.  Occasionally, Dezi would come and ask if he was in pain, but it was intermittent, and it was all she asked.  Ghadira had sat with him most of the first day, but that had obviously bored her enough that she only returned occasionally the second, and had yet to see him today.  Crevan would sit with him some, and then get bored also and wander off, not to come back.  

 

He began to feel very sorry for himself, his thoughts twirling downward.  How could things suck so bad now, when just a few days ago they were so good?  They were partying,  partying , with alcohol and weed. Real weed, not the made up stuff that his mom used for money and revenge.  A girl had been in his arms, his brother and sister had been at his side, and everyone had been happy.

 

Then this happened.  He wished for Aries to come back for him.

 

Three agonizing days later, he did.  Alone.

 

“I can’t find her,” the ram told his brother.

 

“What do you mean, you can’t find her?” Arcos asked.

 

“I mean, I can’t find her,” Aries replied.  “Nobody I was able to find has seen The Phoenix.”

 

“Who were you able to find?” Arcos asked, irritated.

 

Aries sat down on his rump and looked at Arcos’ leg instead of answering the question immediately.  “You been taking care of that?”

 

“My nurses must not get paid enough,” Arcos told him.  “They mostly leave me alone.”

 

Aries sighed, “Yeah,” he muttered.  “I figured.”

 

“So, who were you able to find that no one has seen her?”

 

“I found The MIghty Mutanimals.  They said they were expecting her to come to them soon, but she hasn’t yet.   Jack Kurtzman said he saw her the other day, but not since.  And the Inleters are gone.”

 

“Gone?” Arcos asked

 

“Yeah, gone,” Aries replied. “ As in, not there anymore.”

 

Arcos broke eye contact with his brother.  They were gone?  How could they be gone? “Gone where?  Where in the city could a huge group of mutants go?”

 

“I have no idea,” Aries said peevishly.  “Another sewer juncture?  Somewhere in the old subway system?  An abandoned warehouse?  But they were cleared out.  Any personal items were gone.  The only things that were left were utilitarian.“  He squinted his eyes, “Like my water purifiers.”

 

“Everybody who saw Mama saw her before we got home, then.”

 

Aries nodded.  His golden eyes filled with tears.  

 

“Merde, Wool-for-brains,” Arcos said.  “What are we going to do?”

 

“I thought swearing in French was my thing,” the ram muttered.

 

“Seriously, Aries,” the bear tried to maneuver himself so he could get up.  “What are we going to do?”

 

“I don’t know,” Aries took the bear under the arms and hoisted him up.  “She could be anywhere in the city.”

 

“What happens when she comes home?” Arcos said.

 

“What if she already came home?” Aries asked.

 

The bear was silent, the thought had occurred to him many times in the past three days.  “Do you think they got her before they got Medusa?”

 

Aries looked up, his eyes welling with tears once more.  “I stopped by The Warehouse before I came back here…”

 

Arcos heard the dread in his brother’s voice.  Horror began to creep up his back, bristling his hair slightly at his lumbar.   “And…?”

 

The wool about the ram’s eyes began to darken.  “There was damage to the stuff in the gymnasium,” he said quietly.  “And the ducts at the ceiling.”

 

“None of us were in the gymnasium,” Arcos’ chest constricted.

 

Aries shook his head slowly.  

 

“Was their blood anywhere?” he asked, wracking his memory to see if any of them, besides himself has bled during the fight.

 

Tears filled his brother’s eyes again.  “There was blood in the gym.”

 

“None of us were in the gym,” Arcos repeated in a whisper.

 

The wool by Aries eyes began to darken as she shook his head again.

  
“They got her, too…”  Arcos felt like he couldn’t breathe.

 

“I don’t know,” Aries said gruffly.  “Did they find Razz?” he asked.

 

It was Arcos’ turn to shake his head.  “They came back empty.  And he hasn’t been back yet.”

 

“Do you think they got him, too?” Aries voice was low.

 

“I don’t know,” Arcos shrugged.  He was quiet for a moment.  “We have to help Medusa and figure out what happened to Mama,” he said.

  
“How?” his brother held up part of the bear’s weight.  “You can’t even walk, how are you going to fight?”

 

Arcos deflated.  “We need help.”  

 

“Where are we going to get help?” Aries asked, loudly enough so that anyone around him could hear.  “No one here has lifted a finger to do anything, have they?”

 

Arcos could feel his brother’s body stiffen against him and his body heat rise.  “Aries,” he began.

 

“No,” the ram looked him square in the eyes.  

 

Arcos could feel the eyes of those present on him, waiting agitatedly to see what the volatile ram would do next.

 

“Ou est ta mere?”  (Where is your mother?) Chategris came over to them, seeming to simply emerge from the crowd, clapping his hand on Aries shoulder and looking about the room.  He looked concerned

 

In a tense voice, he replied, “I couldn’t find her.”

 

The cat gave a slow exhalation, glancing down at Arcos’ leg.  “No news on her whereabouts at all?”

 

Aries shook his head, “No news on Razz’s whereabouts?”

 

Chategris seemed not to notice the unconciliatory voice with which Aries spoke.  “Non,” he shook his head.  “We haven’t found him.”

 

Aries was silent a minute, “Did any of you do anything to go get my sister?”

 

The cat looked terse, tilting his head to the side.  “Non,” he said firmly.  “We need your mother here first.  She needs to heal Arcos and anyone else who is injured.”

 

Aries snorted, squinting his eyes, “What did all of you do before you found my mother?”

 

“We didn’t fight ninjas who decimated us,” the cat said, his own hazel orbs staring unblinkingly at Aries.  

 

The ram scoffed and Chategris growled.  

 

“Stop it, both of you,” Arcos said, his voice harsher than he intended.  He tried to limp forward. “I want to get out of here”

 

“And go where?” Aries asked.  “We don’t have anywhere to go.”

 

“Back to the Warehouse, then,” Arcos said.  

 

“And get taken like your sister?” Chategris asked.  “You need to stay here until we can find your maman.”

 

“We?” Arcos asked.  “How is this ‘we’?  What have you done to go and find her?”

 

“We have been keeping our eyes open, mon ami,” he said slowly.  “There is little else we can do.”

 

“You can go  look  for her,” Arcos said.  “You could try and get Medusa back!  You could find Razz and see why the hell he isn’t here!”

 

“He isn’t here,” the cat had a growl deep in his chest, “because of your sister.”

 

“How do you know he isn’t the one who got her captured in the first place?” Aries snapped back.

 

The cat growled in response, but did not say anything.  

 

“Yeah, so it crossed your mind, too,” Arcos noted to Chategris, calming down.  “Aries, come on.  I want to go home.”

 

Chategris turned from them, waving his hand in their direction dismissively.  “Fine, go, get yourselves killed or captured,” he said in French.  “I will give my condolences to your mother when she finally shows up.”

 

“She’ll be a lot nastier to you than we’ve been,” Aries answered in English, propping up his brother as they made their way out.  “Or perhaps you’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with.”

 

Chategris hissed and walked away.

 

As the two sons of the Phoenix walked down the road, Aries said quietly, “We can’t go back to the Warehouse.”

 

“Where are we supposed to go?” his brother asked again.

 

Aries was silent for a moment, and then sighed.  “I guess we have to go to the Burrow,” he sounded as if he were announcing the eradication of all chocolate in the world.

 

“ You ,” Arcos teased, “are recommending we go back to the Burrow?”

 

“I don’t want to go back to the Burrow,” Aries said each word distinctly.  “I want to end up captured by those ninjas even less.”

 

Arcos chuckled.  “Back to the sewers we go?”

 

Aries sighed again, his face falling.  “Yeah,” he muttered.

 


	128. Chapter 128

** I know this is short, but I wanted to get something up this week for all of you wonderfully loyal readers who actually take the time to peruse this thing! :)  Next week will be a regular length chapter.  I promise. **

 

Arcos decided that being left alone was better than being left with people who did not pay attention to him.   Being left alone for an indeterminate amount of time, however, was unsettling.

 

When he and Aries had finally gotten to The Burrow, he’d been dumped in the living room on their old bed.  Everything looked just as they had left it with Crevan, just as they had left it when they’d blocked off the tunnel.  A small cloud of dust had arisen around the bear when he’d been plopped down, so that he had to get up, wincing from the pain in his leg.   Aries went into the storage room to beat the bed and sheets out.

 

"We're going to have to dust everything," he complained to himself. 

 

“Someone’s been here,” he said when he came back in from his own dusting.   He spend the sleeping mat on the ground and helped his brother onto it. 

 

“How do you know?” Arcos asked,  imagining EPF soldiers with automatic weapons roaming the sewer in his mind. 

 

“The first aid box that we left, when we patched up Medusa?  It’s been repacked and closed.”  He shook his head, “I didn’t do that.”

 

Arcos made a growling noise.  “That’s great.”  His eyes lit up, “Maybe it was Splinter.”  Please let it be Splinter,  he hoped.   The Rat mutant was crazy and feral, if he came back,  they could probably overpower him. 

 

Aries shook his head.  “All his little sharp throwing things are still here.”

 

Arcos’ shoulders drooped.  “So someone’s been here in the past day.  Is anything else moved?”

 

The ram shook his head.  “No, just the kit.  And it isn’t even moved, it’s just been repacked and closed.”  He looked at his brother, then said, “Maybe the sewer fairies did it.”

 

Arcos' mind conjured up dirty,  tiny cockroach mutants with their wings whizzing on their backs and pink, glittery wands on their hands.   “What?” he leaned forward.

 

Waving at his brother in annoyance, he looked around, putting his hands on his hips.  “It doesn't look like anything in here has been messed with either.”

 

“Maybe they aren’t coming back,” Arcos replied.

 

“We can hope,” Aries said.  “This is where we are, unless you want to go back to the warehouse or The Cargo Bay.  It’s the only place with supplies.”

 

“Damn you and your preparedness,” Arcos growled.  “Why couldn’t you have made a back up warehouse instead of a back up burrow?”

 

“I guess you didn’t notice,” the ram tilted his head to the side and his nostrils flared, “we  were  living in the back up warehouse, and it was attacked by ninjas!”

 

Arcos huffed in reply and fell backwards on the sleeping mat.

 

Aries walked over to the small kitchen area, “What do you want for dinner?” he asked.  “Rice with bugs, or bugs with rice?”

 

“Aww, the rice has bugs in it?” the bear struggled to get up.

 

“It’s been sitting here for how long in plastic bags...of course it has bugs.”  He walked over to the little table and dumped the bag on it.  “Come over here and help me sort through it.  I don’t want bugs with my rice.”

 

“Bugs aren’t that bad,” Arcos replied, dragging himself over.  “They’re crunchy and savory.”

 

His brother looked at him with his golden eyes, his face impassive.  “To you, maybe.”

 

They had debugged the rice and Aries had fed them.   Then they’d slept, and when no sewer fairies came to claim the first aid kit, Aries decided he was going to go out and about again to look for The Phoenix.  

 

“What are we going to do if you can’t find her?” Arcos had asked.

 

“We’re going to wait weeks for you to heal before we go to that Pretty Building and get some snake and human back.”

 

Arcos hoped that wasn't the case. 

 

So his brother had left him alone, again, with his mother’s crimped bullet shells and a makeshift sling shot by his side.  “In case the sewer fairies show back up,” Aries told him.  The bear put it behind him so he couldn’t see it, looking at it made him tear up.

 

His art supplies were still there, so he spent his time sketching, drawing the charcoal, or pencil, or paintbrush across the paper lazily, to make the experience stretch for as long as he could.  The colors blended and twirled, forming into concrete shapes and solid images.  One of them was a Kraangdroid, one was Medusa curled in a coil, another was Medusa around their mother’s arm when she was tiny.  What had happened to her?

 

He was fairly certain that, in his head, that they wanted her alive.  Or them.  But, his heart would constrict in his chest when he thought about his sister, huge and frightening, unbeatable, lying on the floor of the Not-Haunted Warehouse, immobile with her inner eyelids closed.  The only time had ever seen her even near that vulnerable was in the dead of winter, when the cold prevented her from moving too much.  Even then, though, if she needed, she could get a bout of strength up to fight.  How were they holding her, over at that Pretty Building?  Were they just keeping the collar on her, so she could never move?  The thought of having to be totally still make Arcos’ legs ache, so he shifted on the sleeping mat.

 

He painted a picture of Splinter, sleeping straight on the sleeping mat that his mother had made for him.  One of his mother, her long hair cascading down her back, looking to the side down at something, he didn’t know what.  

 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he raised his head from his pad and sniffed. He smelled...pigeon?  What was a pigeon doing in the sewer?  Soon the smell of ram accompanied it.  Aries had brought a pigeon down here with him?

 

“This is so neat!” Arcos heard Pigeon Pete’s voice crack through the hallway.  “Why would you leave a place like this?”

 

“I already told you, we helped someone and he went crazy,” he heard Aries reply.  “You can’t stay where crazy people know you live and aliens are trying to kill you.  Besides, it’s too small.”

 

With that, the pigeon mutant burst through the doorway to the living room, looking about with exclamations of pleasure.   “All of you lived here through the entire invasion?” he asked.  

 

“Yes,” Aries came through the door, looked at Arcos, and rolled his eyes behind Pete’s back.

 

“Look at all this cool stuff!” Pete said.

 

“No,” Arcos said, maneuvering himself so he could get up, “it isn’t cool.”

 

“You made beds!” Pete bent down to examine one of the sleeping mats.

 

“I don’t mean to be rude, Pete,” Arcos took a hold of Aries hand as his brother hoisted him up.  “But what are you doing here?”

 

Aries beamed a smile.

 

“Aries said you were looking for your mom,” the pigeon replied.  “She’s with us!”

 


	129. Chapter 129

Medusa lay curled against the glass - like material that made up the front of her terrarium.   It was always too cold in her cell, and at certain times of day, the glass was warmer than anywhere else.  She suspected it was much warmer on the other side, the side she would rather be on.

 

Her side hurt, a dull burn that never went away.  After calming down her first day in the glass cage, she had examined the broken stitches on her side.  Only two of the lower stitches in her muscle had broken and both were still embedded in the tissue, so she was able to tie them back off.  As her body tremored in pain, she kept telling herself, “If Aries can do this with his three, thick sausage fingers, I can do it with my four skinny ones.”  It had taken her over an hour, she was sure, to tie off those two tiny stitches, but she couldn’t remember hurting so badly for so long in all of her life.

 

She hadn’t gotten so lucky with her outer stitches. All of them had broken, and not all of them had stayed in her skin.  The ones that did, she managed to re-tie, her breath shaky, but her body not shaking as much as it did before.  She was still left with two long spaces with no stitches, that gaped when she moved, showing pink flesh, stark against her dark green scales.

 

The fly came and observed her for a little while each day.   When it first happened, she had simply stared back him, or tried to, it was difficult to do with his large, compound eyes.  With no iris, she didn’t know exactly where to look.  It did not change his behavior any, he simply continued to watch her, his extremities twitching occasionally.

 

When staring back at him didn’t work, she tried rearing at him, hissing violently.  With her mouth wide open, her fangs gleaming in the light of her terrarium, she made a loud “Ssssssss.”  He started away from the other side of the glass, but then regained his composure.  He stepped back to his former position, still watching.   

 

“Mmm, yezzzz,” he would say to himself.  He rubbed his front hands, if one could call them hands, together when her meal arrived, waiting expectantly.  

 

She knew that when he showed up, her one meal a day was close behind.  He obviously came for that purpose, because he stayed until she devoured the live creature they slid to her through a large slit at the bottom of the door, a slit she had no hope of fitting through.   She tried waiting him out, once going an entire day without eating the paltry racoon they’d tossed in with her.  But eventually her rumbling stomach, with the smell of the mammal, was too much for her to bare.  She tried to eat her meals with her back turned to the glass, so he could not see, and felt a well of guilt bubble up afterward that she had been so weak-willed.

 

What set her on edge the most,  however, was when Bradford came to the glass. He looked through it at her like he was looking at a museum exhibit, his gaze stony.   He was still when he watched almost like a statue, almost unbreathing, almost an exhibit himself, of a decomposing skeleton. 

“What do you want?” she asked, her voice more breathy than she meant it to be.

 

“To see you in a cage,” he answered, his grotesque face smiling widely.

 

“Well, you’ve seen it,” she said.  “Go away.”

 

He laughed.  “Oh no.  I haven’t gotten tired of seeing it yet.”

 

She sibilated at him.

 

He laughed again.  “I have to give it you, though, Pretty Girl,” he leaned against the glass, bringing his hand up to examine his claws.  “You’ve got some punch to you.”  He leered at her.  “I like that.”

 

She rose, dropping her jaw as wide as she could without detaching her jaw, and screamed silently.

 

He didn’t even move.  “No need to get like that,” he told her.

 

Rage burst from her chest at his yellow eyes unblinking, studying her.   She charged the glass as he watched, ramming against it with her unhurt side. 

 

He didn’t even flinched.   "Ah, ah , ah," he wagged a bony finger at her.   

 

“You couldn’t beat me on a one on one fight,” she said.  “With no help from your fishy friend, or from a shock collar.”

 

“The fish is not my friend,” he said seriously.  “You think you can beat me without your two stuffed animals to help you?”

 

Her black eyes sparkled, “You don’t remember how our last fights went?”

 

“Yeah, I do,” he answered, smiling sardonically.  “You ended up with that big gouge in your side.”

 

“Even with a gouge in my side, you had to put a shock collar on me.”  She began to sway back and forth, undulating from her head down to where her body lay on the floor.

 

"Be careful what you wish for,  Pretty Girl," he said.   "You just might get it." 

 

Two days later, the back door, that held the slit where her food was slid to her, opened.  As soon as it did, she made a strike at whomever may be there.  An electric shock broadcast through her body, sending her to the floor just outside of her cell, twitching.  

 

Two dog mutants she didn’t recognize, approached her slowly.  “There’s a good snakey-snakey,” said one of them.   “You play nice, we play nice.”

 

Nice my tail, she thought, rearing up and dislocating her jaw.   I’ll eat one of these suckers \---then she was on the floor once more, convulsing beyond her control.

 

“You might wanna be doin’ that, chica,” said the other dog.  “You gonna need all your strength in the ring.”

 

In the ring?  She raised her head, the dog with the control raised it threateningly.  “I am going to eat you slowly,” she said, swaying back and forth, “head first.  You’ll slowly suffocate as you work your way down my intestines.”

 

“You ain’t gonna be eatin’ nothin’,” said the second dog.  “Especially if you lose.”

 

“Lose at what?” she asked.

 

“The fight,” said the dog with the controller.  “Move forward.  Move slow, and I won’t zap ya.”

 

She backed away from him, her body moving in tiny increments.  “What fight?” she asked, her tongue flicking out.

 

“The fight you wanted with Bradford,” said the second dog.

 

The fight she wanted with Bradford?   “Oh,” she drawled.  “That fight.”  She moved easily down the corridor, not needing to be ‘zapped’.  What kind of fight was Bradford going to have with her?  Especially that these two mutants were taking her to him.  Or at least, she assumed they were taking her to him.  She was lead down again, she hadn’t thought they could go any farther down than the giant terrarium chamber.   As they did, the sound of the fan at the floor in the terrarium room became louder and louder until they emerged in a chamber where the fan was the ceiling.

 

The place had been set up almost like a type of ampitheatre, with raising seating behind glass, like had a hockey rink.  While it separated the bottom stage from the seating, it would little to stop anyone who could jump.  This is a gladiator ring, she thought.  She laughed out loud, a hissy, breathy sound.  Both dog mutants looked surprised.  

 

All she had to do was get a grip on Bradford, and in a moment she could have every bone, showing and not showing, broken and bloody.   

 

The fish mutant, Xever she thought his name was, clomped up to her, crossing his arms across his chest.  “I have $5000 resting on you winning,” he said, squinting his eyes.  “You better win.”

 

“What happens if I don’t?” she asked with contempt.

 

“I lose $5000,” he said.  “And you will wish you lost only that, believe me.”  Xever pushed her in toward the center of the ring, 

 

She moved, he could not make her move unless she did so willingly.  She hissed and he laughed in reply.  “Are you going to take this collar off of me?” she snapped.

 

“No,” he answered her like she was crazy.  “I’m hoping you win against Dog-Breath.  I’m not stupid.”

 

They were going to leave the collar on?  How was she supposed to fight with this electrical contraption on her?  Were they going to use it?

 

Bradford leapt over the glass partition, laughing as he did so.  “Hello, Pretty Girl,” he said.  “I decided to grant your wish.”

 

Her heart beat in her chest like an animal trying to escape from under her sternum.  In her peripheral vision, she could see the seating, almost full of mutants.  She thought that she might have recognized some of them, but she had to be wrong.  Why would anyone she would know be here?  Despite her fear, she smiled at him, open mouthed and menacing.  “You must have death wish, then,” she said.

 

He shook his head, the bits of black hair attached to it shaking slightly at where his cheeks should be.  “You don’t have your teddy bear and sleepy lamb to help you now,” he taunted.  “But, I promise to even the odds.”

 

She hissed loudly.

 

“I’ll only use my hands and my feet on you,” he chuckled.  “Maybe my teeth.”

 

She struck at him, faster than the speed of her thoughts, and when she landed on where he was standing, it wasn’t there.  Suddenly, there was a strike to her back, strong enough that it actually moved the rest of her body along the floor.  Another hit to her shoulders sent her splaying forward, her chest hitting the ground painfully.   The dog mutant landed on her back, punching again and again in the same spot.  A sharp pain coursed through her where her stitches were, and she thought perhaps they had broken open again.   She lashed her tail out, and felt Bradford’s body hit her and then go flying off.

 

She reared, so she could see what was happening around her.  Spying Bradford getting up, she struck at him again.  He dodged.  WIthout needing a recover, she lashed at him again, her nose almost hitting the concrete, Bradford no longer in the spot.  She brought the rest of her body close to her, making herself take up the least amount of floor space as possible.  

 

Bradford came down with an overhead punch where her tail had been only a moment before, to hit the concrete hard enough to crack it.  Medusa charged at him, his hands, palms flat, attempted to make contact with her muzzle.  She dodged to the right, to the left, to the right again, and then whipped her head in to catch Bradford’s arm in her mouth.  Both of her fangs missed him, but she managed to catch him in her jaws.  She lifted him off the ground, as quickly as if she were trying to trap him in her body, and flung him over her head.  He hit the wall of the amphitheatre, slumping to the ground.

 

It was enough time for her reach him and wrap him up in her great girth.  She rose up in the air, the dog mutant trapped her coils when she started to squeeze.  She heard a crack and he grunted.

 

Then her entire world became red with pain.  Her body lost all of its contraction, so that Bradford dropped to the ground, gasping for the breath she had denied him in her death grip and holding his side.  Then, her muscles contracted of their own volition, so that she a roiling length on the concrete, as if she were attempting to tie herself in a knot.  She let out a scream, as loud as her breathy voice would allow her.  She didn’t even feel it in her throat, her muscles cramped so much.  Then the cramping was gone.  She tried to lift herself, but the intense pain started again, so that she slumped to the floor unmoving.  She managed to close her inner eyelid.

 

She saw shadows, fuzzy colors, coming toward her.  She had trouble focusing her vision, and with her transparent eyelid drawn, everything was slightly out of focus anyway.   Bradford’s face came into view, like a zombie decaying in front of her.  “You lose, Pretty Girl,” he said.

 

“She didn’t lose,” she heard Xever say.  “You had to be rescued.”

 

She felt someone pick her up, it wasn’t Bradford, she wasn’t sure who it was.  She was trumped back up the stairs, and unceremoniously dumped in her cell.  Again, Bradford was by her head, “Don’t worry,” he told her, “we’ll have more fun later.”

  
  
  
  
  



	130. Chapter 130

Phoenix scrambled out of Leatherhead’s arms weeping all over again when a dripping Aries and Pete helped Arcos hobble into The Mutanimals hideaway.  She’d scrubbed the Back Up Burrow, making almost no progress in getting the place cleaner.  She could only get so high on the walls, and the ceiling was a no go.  The floor was so encrusted with grime that it took two or three passes over each area to get the stuff up.  The top layer came  off nicely, in large slates.  Underneath, however, had been a different story.  It was either hard as rock or so gooey it was difficult to even scrape, much less clean it.

 

When she couldn’t take it anymore,  she gathered up what little medical supplies she had, and went above ground.   Deciding to check up on the motley group of mutants, she’d found Jack Kurtzman at the station again, and he’d given her the directions to their new hideaway.

 

When she had arrived,  she was told that Medusa had been captured by the Foot Clan.  She had laughed uncertainly, “No, she hasn’t.”

 

All four of them looked at her with such a great amount of pity on their faces, a sort of menagerie of mammalian, reptile, and avian expressions, that it made her nauseous.  “No,” she repeated.  “The kids are at The Cargo Bay with the Grey Cats.”

 

“Aries was here,” Leatherhead said, “looking for you.”

 

She shook her head, why would Aries be alone?  This was some time of mean trick.

 

“It isn’t a trick, Phoenix,” Dr. Rockwell said.

 

She turned, not having examined any of them, leaving the few things she’d brought with her and ran.  

 

“Wait!” Slash call after her.

 

Dr. Rockwell answered, “She is coming back after she goes to the Cargo Bay.”

 

Get out of my head, her conscious screamed, though she didn’t know if the chimpanzee mutant heard it or not.

 

She ran until her lung burned and her mouth was dry.  It only got her halfway to the Cargo Bay.  She sank onto the rooftop, the sticky gravel digging into her hands as she braced herself..  "I'm getting old," she mumbled.   The sounds of the night below grounded her as she caught her breath; cars passing by, click of shoes walking,  people talking to one another and themselves.   None of them knew that a woman rested on the rooftops above them just below the dark clouds, oblivious of the war going on,  right under their noses.  Her chest tightened.   No,  she told herself firmly.  She stood up, straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.  This isn't about you. 

 

She resumed her trek,  the cloudy sky gifting the earth with a drizzle.  By the time she arrived at the Cargo Bay, she was misted with a fine sparkles. 

 

The Phoenix found Myra first, her golden ears falling on her shoulders like wavy hair.   "Where's Aries?" she asked. 

 

Myra’s forehead wrinkled, her eye ridges raised. "I don't know," she replied. 

 

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Phoenix snapped

 

"I don't know," Myra repeated.   "He isn't here." 

 

Chategris sauntered from somewhere in the back, his chest and feet bare and covered with wet sparkles.   "Ma cherie,"  he crooned.   "You have finally returned to us, non?" 

 

"No, " she answered quickly.  " Where are my children? "

 

"Not here," he murmured, approaching her.  He took her by the shoulder and guiding her away from the middle of the entrance to the side of the large, open floor. 

 

"Then where?" she demanded, jerking from his grasp.

 

"I do not know where your sons are," his hazel eyes looked at her warily. 

 

She had to back away to keep him from being right on top of her.  She felt her back tighten as if a fist had entered her muscles and grabbed her.   “You know where my daughter is?”  Her voice sounded as if it came from outside of her ears, her own head filled with her heartbeat.

 

“She has been captured by the ninjas,” he said evenly.

 

He backed her into a concrete post, stopping her progress.  “No,” she whispered.

 

“Razz might be with her,” he said.  “We cannot find him.”  He drew his brows together, his mouth turning downward.  The movement made the tips of his eyeteeth show against his bottom lip.  

 

She shook her head, feeling tiny drops of water fall from her hair onto her face.  “Where are my sons?  They’re with them.”

 

“They were here,” Chategris spoke as if he she were a small child.  “Arcos was hurt--”

 

“Arcos was hurt?!”  The Mighty Mutanimals had not told her that!  She dashed to the side, but he stood in front of her, thrusting his hand out so he was holding her.   “Let me go!”  She pulled against him.

 

He did not let go.

 

“Aries left, to find you, ma Cherie,” his voice sounded like it did when he was purring, only no happy vibration came from chest.  “He couldn’t.”  

 

She shook her head again, that couldn’t be true.  The voice that was not her voice would have told her.  It would have lead her back to the Cargo Bay.  It would have lead her back to the Not Haunted Warehouse.  It would have, it always had.

 

“Where are the boys now?” she asked in a rush.

 

“Je ne sais pas,” he replied.

 

She jerked hard against him   “I have to find them!”  Even to herself, she sounded hysterical.  

 

“You need to stay here,” he proclaimed.  “Where I can keep you safe.”

 

She thrashed against his hold, but he only tightened his grip.  “Let me go!” she shrieked.  When he did not, she did what she’d never done to a friend before: she drew her knife and slashed him across his arm.

 

He meowed fiercely, grabbing his bleeding forearm.  

 

She ran from the bay, sheathing her knife without wiping it off.  The drizzle had turned into a downpour, she was drenched before she was even a block away.  She didn’t know if she was being followed, she didn’t care.  She stopped when the sob that was she was pressing down would no longer be contained.  She stopped and slid down a support post of a water tank, keeping her feet planted so her thighs were pressed to her chest when her bottom hit the ground.  She buried her face in her knees and wailed.  The noise carried away from her like a physical thing floating through the rain.

 

They were all supposed to be safe!

 

The Kraang were gone, there were no men in business suits, or robots with brain in their torsos, or brains in flying disks to chase them any longer.  The EPF was lessing its presence in the city as things were returning to normal.  She didn’t need to sneak like she had to for the past half a year, the constant worry of dying, of being caught and tortured.  All of that was supposed to be gone.

 

Why did these ninjas want her daughter?

 

Is that why the skeletal dog and the break-dancing fish were at the Not Haunted Warehouse?  Had they been waiting for the kids to come back so they could capture Medusa?  What in the world would they want with Medusa?

 

A loud crack of lightening lit up the sky.  She gasped,  her head snapping up, eyes wide, breath caught in her throat.  She waited, looking up at the sky for a moment, before standing up and making her way down the fire escapes to the street.

 

Her face cooled rapidly when hot tears no longer warmed her cheeks and chin. 

 

She stepped in puddles on the sidewalk, it didn’t matter if she soaked her shoes, she was already sopping.  The cold was seeping into her clothes now, even in the height of summer, the rain in New York was not a warm balm.  Along with the water washing over and onto the street, so did her hope that her children were safe.  She had been selfish, she had been remiss, and now they were gone.   No one was on the street, the downpour was starting to create little streams on the curbs that ran into the storm drains

 

Dr. Rockwell must have heard her thoughts before she arrived at their hideout, because Leatherhead was out in the rain to fetch her. She knew he couldn’t have heard her coming with the sound of the storm.  He snatched her up like a rag doll.  The scent of swamp and spice engulfed her, reminding her of Medusa’s.  Her chest clutched, so that her hands tried to clutch the tough hide of the mutant carrying her.

 

He put her down once he was settled, holding her in between his legs like a toy.   She saw that Pigeon Pete was not there with them.  The other’s faces, however, all shone with pity, their eye ridges inverted Vs, their eyes soft, their mouths in a slight frown. 

 

“Where  is Pete?” she asked.

 

“He’s gone to find Arcos and Aries,” Slash told her.

 

Their looks filled her with guilt, she turned and buried her head in Leatherhead’s stomach and sobbed, her shoulders shaking and bawling in long exhalations.

 

After a moment, she felt Slash’s hand, it had to be his from the size of it, on her shoulder.  “We’ll get her back, Phoenix,” he said in his gravelly voice.  It was filled with the same pity his face had been.  “Aries said they wanted her alive.”

 

“Why would they want her?” she wailed into Leatherhead’s solar plexus.  The Kraang were gone.  She was supposed to be safe!

 

“None of us are safe,” Dr. Rockwell said gently.  “You have known that for more than twenty years.”

 

She flashed him a nasty look, before burying herself in the mutant alligator again. 

 

“From the stories the three of you have told us,” Dr. Rockwell explained, “it sounds as if she is extremely powerful.  Perhaps they feel they can overpower you if she isn’t there.”

 

“Why would they want to overpower us?” she asked, turning her head to the side, resting her cheek on Leatherhead’s scales.  “We don’t have any quarrel with them.”

 

“You don’t need to have a quarrel with them for them to have a quarrel with you,” Slash said.  “You either have something they want or you’re collateral damage.”

 

“What do we have that they would want?” she twisted around so she could face everyone.  

 

None of them answered her.

 

Then, Pete fluttered in, holding Arcos by one side, with her Aries on the other, and she sobbed all over again.    The Mighty Mutanimals settled the bear comfortably, and his mother hovered nearby, desperate to examine him.

 

“This happened days ago,” she noted.

 

He nodded.  “Yeah, it did.”

 

The words struck her like a slap. She had failed at the first thing a mother wa supposed to do.  She hadn’t been there to keep her children safe.  She hadn’t made them stay with her.  She hadn’t gone with them to the Cargo Bay.  “You haven’t been taking good care of it.”

 

“Yeah, well, The Grey cats aren’t known for their bedside manner.”  She shot him a hurt look, and he sighed.  “I’m sorry, Mama,” he mumbled.  “Can you fix it?”

 

“Of course I can fix it,” she said.  “The question is, how fast I can fix it.  Who stitched it?”

 

“I did,” Aries squatted down next to them.  “From the stuff at The Burrow.”

 

“I got some stuff from The Burrow, too,” she admitted.  “You’re getting pretty good at this, Lamb’s Ear.  Pretty soon, you’ll put me out of a job.”

 

He huffed as he stood.  Slash chuckled and put his hand on the ram’s shoulder.

 

The golden ants tingled faintly in her palm as she placed her hands on Arcos’ thigh.  The wetness from his wound dried as they watched, and the edges scabbed over, but that was all her healing did.  She sighed and looked up at him.   “That one’s a doozy, Teddy Bear.”

 

“Tell me about it,” he growled.  “It’s in my leg.”

 

“It looks like the lot of you will be staying here for a while,” Dr. Rockwell said.

 

“We can go to The Burrow.” Aries looked to his mother.  “It’s safe there.”

 

“There’s only one way in and out,” she argued.  “It’s only safe until we’re trapped in there for some reason.”

 

“Then we can go to The Back-Up Burrow,” he countered.

 

“You can’t take him to that filthy place with a wound like that,” Dr. Rockwell sneered.  

 

Aries glanced at his mother, who nodded.  “The good doctor is right, I think,” she said.  “We’ll be staying here for a while.”


	131. Chapter 131

The man with the armor, Master Shredder they all called him, came by Medusa’s terrarium every day, without fail.  He didn’t stop at it, however, but stopped at the one to the right of her.  Sometimes, he would stare into it, as if he was staring off into space.  Other times, he would talk to the prisoner inside, softly murmuring apologies and promises.  That was how she learned the serpent next to her was Karai.

 

She wished she could see her, but the walls were not transparent like the front.   When there was no one in the large terrarium room, except for the fly, who was almost always there, she pressed herself against the wall and would call, “Karai?  It’s me, one of your friends.”

 

Sometimes she got a hiss as a reply.  Sometimes she had no reply at all.

 

Though Master Shredder seemed to pay Medusa no heed whatsoever, Bradford was another story altogether.   While he did not come to taunt her every day, he came on a very regular basis.  He’d lean casually against the glass and talk to her.

 

“I was asking around today,” he said once, “and someone told me you like to eat rats.  I’ll make sure you get a nice, big one soon.”

 

“Snakes can’t keep their body temperature on their own, can they?” he taunted once.  “Maybe I’ll have Stockman lower the temperature in there...I can see what happens to snake blood when it gets too frosty.”

 

Another time, he said, “You know, I read that boa constrictors don’t need to eat for a year.  I might see if that’s true.”

 

“You can read?” she’d retorted.

 

He smiled lasciviously.  “Yeah,” he nodded, “I sure can.”

 

For the next two days, she wasn’t fed at all.

 

Her stomach would tighten whenever she picked up the scent of a living thing, so that she had to stay pressed against the glass to keep away from the door.  Her mouth watered for the first day, then only gave her a pucker response without saliva the second.  

 

When Bradford came back on day three, he tsked as he put a hand on the glass and leaned toward it.  “Aww, Pretty Girl,” he said.  “You’re looking kind down in the dumps.  What’s wrong?”

 

She slithered to the far corner of the terrarium and curled into a tight coil, her head tucked in the middle.

 

“Don’t be like that,” he crooned.  “I brought a surprise.”

 

She raised her head. “I don’t want any of your surprises,” she replied.

 

His laugh was a raspy, cruel sound, “You’ll want this one.”

 

At that, her shock collar went off, sending pain through her entire body.  Even as she convulsed against the corner, she saw the door open and someone was pushed in.  As soon as the door was closed, the collar subsided.

 

It was a gray rabbit mutant, she saw as her vision came into focus.  He ran to the opposite end of the terrarium, against the wall and glass, catty corner to her.   She recognized him as one of the Inleters.   “Please don’t eat me,” he implored.

 

He smelled absolutely delicious.  “I’m not going to eat you,” she muttered.  “What are you doing here?”

 

The rabbit’s eyes went wide, if they could go any wider.  “I’m sorry,” he rambled.  “I’m so sorry, don’t eat me!”

 

Bradford leaned against the glass near him.  “You should have thought about that before you messed up.”

 

Medusa’s squinted her black eyes and her heart began to rap in her chest.  “What is he talking about?” she asked the rabbit.  “What are you sorry for?”

 

“It wasn’t my idea.”  The rabbit tried to claw at the glass, his head turned at almost 180 degrees to keep an eye on the snake.  “I voted against it.  But Sparks and the others decided to do it anyway.  It wasn’t my idea.”

 

She flicked her tongue, her cheeks puckering at the rabbit’s smell.  Her stomach slowly sank, leaving a cold, empty block in its place.  “What are you talking about?”

 

Bradford laughed.

 

“Sparks,” he cried.  “Sparks brought us here.  He said they would feed us and keep us cool and warm.  He said we’d be taken care of!”

 

“And were you?” Bradford asked.

 

The rabbit turned to him.  “Yes!” he screamed.  “Yes!  Please...please Bradford, let me out.”

 

“Tell her what Master Shredder gave you,” the dog growled.

 

He turned slowly to face Medusa.  “Master Shredder gave us beds, and clothes, and rooms,” the rabbit started to cry.  “And good food.  And money.”

 

“Money?”  Medusa furrowed her eye ridges.  “What would a mutant want with money?”

 

The rabbit turned back to Bradford, who only nodded.  “We spend it,” the rabbit said softly.  “We can spend it.  We can even spend it with some humans.”

 

Medusa drew half of her lip up in confusion and began to rise in her coil.  “What?”

 

“They gave us all these things,” the rabbit whined.

 

“Tell her why,” Bradford rumbled.

 

“Because we told them about your mother...and the rat.”

 

“What?”  Medusa wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.  She rose higher, so that now her head was above the rabbit’s.   Her mother and the rat?  Splinter?  “So?  What do they care about a little human and crazy rat mutant.”

 

“Oh,” said Bradford.  “The rat’s not crazy anymore.  He’s has all of his faculties.”

 

Medusa hissed slightly, the rapping in her chest increasing.  “So?”

 

“Tell her,” Bradford tapped the glass at the rabbit mutant’s ear.

 

“They want the rat.  If they have one of you, we told them that your mother would come to rescue you.  If they have her, then the rat will come to rescue her.”

 

Bradford chortled.

 

Medusa was still, not blinking.  She gulped for breath, the rapping in her chest turned to a banging against her sternum.  What the two of them were saying slowly dawned on her.  They weren’t trying to capture her mother for her to heal anyone.  They were going to use her as bait, just as they were using her as bait.

 

“Please don’t eat me,” the rabbit squeaked.

 

She noticed she was swaying, a wave starting at her skinny head and travelling down her body around the coil to the tip of her tail.  The cold spot in her stomach began to heat up, melting the ice of confusion.  “We helped you,” she hissed.  “We helped you  survive. ”  She flapped her body out of its coil so that it was now a jumble below her.  “You betrayed us.”  She flicked her tongue, squinting her black eyes.  The rabbit was all she could see. He smelled delicious. 

 

"Was it worth a warm bed?" she asked.   "Was it worth the money?" 

 

He whimpered. 

 

"Was it worth dying for?"  She curled get her lip, revealing more of her fangs. 

 

"No," he cried. 

 

"Too bad, " she hissed. 

 

Bradford laughed. 

 

Medusa made a strike against the glass, hitting it hard with her shoulder.  The mutant dog jumped, his yellow eyes wide, then placed both hands on the glass and growled.  She hissed back at him, putting her hands to glass, as if to put her palms to his, her mouth wide open, her lip curled up to expose as much of her fangs as she could.   

 

“I’m not the one who gave you in,” he growled.  “I’m just the one that came to get you.”

 

There was nothing she could do to Bradford from this side of the glass.  There was little she could do when they were on the same side, not with the collar on her neck.  But she could do something to the rabbit mutant he’d put in here with her.

 

She turned to him, his ears back, his eyes so wide they seemed to take up the sides of his head.  She flicked her tongue and the smell of the rabbit smacked her like an open hand.  She darted forward.  Before the gray rabbit could blink, she was wrapped around him.  His eyes bulged, as the telltale cracking of bones vibrated against her scales.  His mouth screamed, but no sound came out.  She squeezed slowly, taking all the breath out of the mutant, until he lie limp in her coils.

 

Still warm, breathing, and somewhat conscious, the rabbit laid his head against her uppermost coil, whether because his back was broken and he could not move it, or because he was too hurt and exhausted to do so, Medusa didn’t know.  Nor did she care.  Unhinging her jaw, she caught her lower teeth against the Inleter’s forehead, then clamped the larger teeth and fangs of the top one against the back of his head.

 

Slowly, she worked her mouth around him, to his nose.  She could feel him breathing inside of her mouth, warm air being sucked up from her, then released again.  The ptergoid walk  of her jaw down his head, engulfed his shoulders and slowly worked down his body.  She took longer than she’d ever taken in consuming prey.  His head was down her neck before the rabbit stopped breathing.  She had to undulate her body in concertina-like waves to help get him into her gut.  She could feel the warmth leave his body, albeit in tiny bits, as she worked him down her gullet.  When she passed his knees, she tilted her head up, and straightened out her tremendous body, the Inleter’s body falling into her, until his feet had moved past her throat.  Then, with a slowness that belied her ability to catch something in her coils, she turned to the glass.

 

Bradford was still there, his yellow eyes glowing brightly, his hands still on the glass with his bony fingers splayed.  The sneer on his muzzle was unmistakable.  “Did you enjoy that, Pretty Girl?”

 

“That,” Medusa said, repositioning her body to accommodate the huge bulge in it, “is what I am going to do to you.”

 

He shook his head, tiny little movements that made the fur that hung on his cheeks sway.   “I hope you enjoyed it,” he said, as if she’d not spoken.  “Because it’s the last meal you’re getting for a year.”


	132. Chapter 132

Phoenix had forgotten what it was like to be a real, honest-to-goodness guest, having no real purpose for being somewhere other than to just be.  She had no one, save Arcos, to care for.  She had no chores to do.  She had no garden to tend.  She had no clothes to mend. She didn’t have to cook or clean.

 

She was bored out of her cotton-picking mind.

 

She thought her bored days were over with her exit from The Burrow, but apparently she had been mistaken.   She had nothing but times on her hands as they waited for Arcos to get to a point where he could fight.

 

“You know,” Aries suggested.  “We could go without Arcos.  I mean, that still makes six of us.”

 

A collective sigh of relief came from the group.  Apparently everyone had been thinking the same thing.

 

“We could,” said Slash, “especially since it’s an in and out mission.”

 

“No!” the bear had spoke up.  “You can’t go without me.”

 

“Waiting for you to heal puts Medusa in even more danger,” Leatherhead argued.  

 

“I can help!” he growled.  “You just have to give me time.”  He turned to his mother.  “Can’t you make it heal faster?”

 

She knew he didn’t mean it as an accusation, but it hit her like one.  “I’m doing the best I can,” she said, even though she was sure there was something else she could do, she just didn’t know what.  

 

“You make Medusa heal right away, almost all the time,” he persisted.

 

“Hey, man,” Aries came over, cutting off Slash before he could speak.  “Come off it.  She’s doing the best she can.”

 

“I’ve sent Kurtzman out to get some conventional medicines,” Dr. Rockwell said tp Arcos, glancing at his mother surreptitiously.   “But I doubt they are going to help you heal any faster than you already are.”

 

“We can be in and out in no time,” Slash said.

 

“They aren’t going to kill her,” Arcos insisted.  “I know, they wouldn’t have carried her anywhere if they were going to kill her, they would have just killed her.”  He looked at Leatherhead.  “She weighs more than you!”

 

Leatherhead gave him an incredulous look.

 

“But we can go get her now, Teddy Bear,” she told him.

 

“Mama,” he’d implored.  “I--I’m the reason--”

 

Her heart broke for him, so much so, that she did not make him finish.  “It’s alright, honey,” she said without thinking,  “ We will wait for you.”  She immediately hated herself for saying it.  She was having to choose one of them over the other, either way.

 

She’d already lost one daughter.  She didn’t know if she could bear to lose another.  And her son was safe here, only waiting to heal his leg so he could walk normally again.  He didn’t need to fight.

 

No one fought her decision, so they all waited.

 

And with the waiting, came free time.   Lots of it.

 

Thoughts of Medusa would come to her unbidden, much like the voice that was her’s but  not her voice.   She had been her baby, or she thought of her as such.  She was so tiny when she found her, barely the size of a garden snake.  She weighed nothing, and didn’t for a long time.  She spent her entire babyhood and a good deal of her childhood, wrapped around The Phoenix’s arm.  When she grew too long for that, she took up her shoulder, then her chest.  It was only when her mother’s back began to hurt from her weight that she’d made her get off.

 

It was a hard process for both of them.  Medusa did not like being on the ground, and Phoenix missed the warm and heavy feeling that the snake gave her.  It grounded her.  

 

She’d had to learn how to ground herself all over again.

 

Now, despite what Arcos insisted, she could be dead.  Or at the very least hurting.  If she’d tried to go and find them, instead of running to the Back-Up Burrow, this wouldn't have happened.

 

She decided to try meditating.  After all, Dr. Rockwell seemed to do a great deal of it.  She was reluctant to do it at first.  With the chimp’s penchant for tickling other people’s minds, she was ill at ease.  But a few days of him giving no indication that he was intruding upon her thoughts, she approached him.

 

“May I meditate with you?” she asked him.

 

“Of course, good lady,” he said, gesturing to his side.

 

He sat in classical yoga style, his legs crossed with his feet sticking up in lotus pose and his fingers circled in dyhana mudra.   He ohmed as he meditated, something that Phoenix had never taken up herself.  She didn’t like chanting.  She was always afraid it would block out the voice that was not her voice, and one the highlights of a meditation would be if she heard it.  Perhaps he heard too much noise, she muse, and was trying to drown it out.

 

She took her own posture, lotus with her hands resting on her knees.  She fell into a peaceful silence, waiting, hoping for the voice that was not her voice but was also her voice to say something to her.  Maybe even have a conversation.  Maybe comfort her with her decision to choose her son over her daughter.  

 

All  she heard was, “...Titanium Sapphire  laser, a Sirah Matisse TX, tuned to 845.5820 nm...,” very clearly in Dr. Rockwell’s voice.   Both of them snapped their eyes open, looked at each other, and came out of their respective poses. 

 

“I’m having trouble settling down,” she said quickly.  “You go ahead.”

 

He looked at her askance, and then closed his eyes and crossed his legs once again.

 

All of her normal time filling things were no longer needed.  No one needs plarn mats, she mourned.  Or plastic bag shoes.  Or sheets.  Or blankets.  Or healing.  I can’t even find anyone to give any herbs to!

 

She pouted a little, but knew that was highly unbecoming, so she stopped.

 

“Maybe if you didn’t have your head up your rump, you’d have more information,” she snapped at Kurtzman once.  “I’m sorry,” she said immediately.  “You don’t have your head up your rump.”

 

Later on that day, Slash came over to her and whispered, “He does have his head up his rump.  But he’s a good guy.”

 

She laughed and reminded herself to be grateful for good friends.

 

Since she had nothing else to do, and Arcos was so eager to get his sister, she finally settled on trying to heal him without the golden ants coming to her palms first.

 

She laid her hands on his wound, closed her eyes, and concentrated.  The knots and the ends of the horsehair stitches pricked her palms.  She could feel the crust of the scab that had wept through the stitches.  His bare skin, where she’d gently shaved it to make room for her to do her work, was soft under her fingers.  If she moved them, the newly growing fur bristled beneath her fingertips.   Her eyes still closed, she brought to mind how the light that was not a light felt when it exited her body, flowing down her arms and outward.  She remembered the feel of it, tried to make her hands remember the feel of it.

 

Each time she tried, nothing happened.

 

She huffed away in frustration, until she calmed down to try again.

 

Instead of trying to recall a feeling, she tried instead to visualize his wound closing, the skin knitting together.  With her eyes open, she superimposed the image in her mind with the one her eyes saw in front of her.  Again, nothing happened.  Each time she tried, the wound remained the same as it was before, and no tingling came to her hands.

 

She then tried to imagine it closing with her eyes shut.  The flesh came together like ice forming on a sheet in her mind’s eye, but when her eyes were opened, nothing had happened.

 

“I didn’t even feel a tingle,” Arcos told her.

 

She let out a frustrated noise that sounded remarkably like a quiet growl and stomped away.  There had to be a way to do this without it being beyond her control.  While she had managed to keep from touching someone when the pin and needles in her palms turned to burning, she’d never been able to make it come from nowhere.  It was as if the golden ants decided to wake up of their own accord, she was only to direct them once they were awakened, not kiss them to open their eyes.  But there had to be a way to wake them up, she just needed to figure it out.

 

I’ve read how many books on this kind of thing? she chided herself.  I should be able to figure it out after all this time.  She buried her face in her knees.  Why won’t you tell me what to do? she asked the voice that was no her voice.

 

She received no answer.

 

A fourth idea, and umpteenth attempt, was to try both methods at the same time.   She placed her hands on either side of Arcos’ wound, her fingers resting gently on his thigh.  Taking a deep breath, she forced the feeling of the golden light exiting her palms to come to her.  It was a phantom feeling, not the real thing, but it was all she could bring up.  Her eyes rested gently on the wound, softening so that the light that was not a light surrounded it, her son’s leg, her hands, and each object in her peripheral vision.  Over the stitched injury lingered a dark patch, the familiar indication of a hurt over the area.

 

Then it clicked in her brain what to do.

 

Her eyes open, her mind focused, she saw the dark patch hovering over his closed gouge begin to fade away.  It broke up into a tiny little black bits, as if a thousand perforations had formed and the light was finally allowed to shine through.  Heat built in her hands so fast that it took her breath away, burned her palms before it burst forth in a great slurry of light from her body to her son’s.

 

The black slowly deteriorated until there was nothing left but the light that was not a light and the little golden glow of the healing ants leaving her.  The light in front of her grew brighter, and brighter, so that encompassed her vision.

 

Suddenly the world went dark, and she was thrown back against the concrete underneath her.  When she came to herself, Leatherhead was holding her down by the shoulders, his large muzzle barely a hair’s breadth away from her nose.  His breath was warm and meaty, and the pressure of his paws on her shoulders sent a stab of pain through her.

 

He blinked at her, “Are you alright, Phoenix?” 

 

She blinked back, her brow furrowing in confusion.  “I’m fine,” she huffed, struggling to sit up.   He let her go and sat back on his haunches, allowing her to rise.    She looked behind her to see the rest of the Mutanimals and her sons staring at her.  “What happened?  Did I do it?”

 

“Yeah,” Aries said slowly.  “You did it.”

 

She looked at Arcos’ thigh and sucked her lip in.  The wound was no longer there, in fact, the patch that had been shaved now sported longer hair than the rest of his leg, as if his winter coat had grown in at just that one spot.

 

“Good thing the stitches aren’t synthetic,” Dr. Rockwell intoned.  “There isn’t anyway we’re getting them out unless we cut him open again.”

 

She glanced to the chimpanzee, who looked back at her, decidedly annoyed.  Slash looked alarmed and Pete looked as if he was about the flutter away at any second.  “What--?” she shook her head, confused.

 

“Why didn’t you let go?” Leatherhead asked behind her.  

 

She turned to face him, her brow still cinched at the bridge of her nose.

 

“Let’s look on the bright side,” Arcos shook his leg and chuckled self-consciously.  “  We don’t have to cut me open because we’re poor.  Be thankful, eh Mama?”


	133. Chapter 133

Medusa had regurgitated chunks of fur and bone of the mutant she’d supped on right in front of the door on her terrarium. If someone else was going to come in, then they’d have to step over that stinking mess to do so.  And it did stink.  The reek of rotting flesh filled the cell and with the sorry excuse for ventilation being used, it did not dissipate.  She could hear people on the other side of the wall, as they passed by, make comments about it.  At least they have to smell it out there too, Medusa thought.  It gave her a modicum of satisfaction.

 

Bradford was true to his word, she received no more food.  She didn’t need it, she certainly wasn’t hungry.  She’d never eaten something so large in her life.  Her stomach was distended to such a degree that it hurt, stretching her skin out so she could feel the scales separate,  until she brought up the indigestible bits that didn’t move down her body.   Even now, her body sported a large bulge that stretched her skin uncomfortably, but not painfully.  She wondered if this was how pregnant women felt.  Sometimes she could feel her stomach working at the meat in her, her muscles churning to mix chyme and digestive juices, working the mass down her digestive system as it slowly dissolved into her body.

 

The skeletal dog mutant showed up occasionally, a leering smile on his face from the other side of the glasslike partition. She curled into a loose coil since her feeding, the protuberance in her gut making it very difficult to wind in on herself.   

 

“Is it true that snakes digest their food slower when it’s cold?” he asked, swirling the control to her collar on his finger.

 

She wanted to ignore him.  In fact, she had at first, but once he figured out that her wait out time was longer than he was willing to endure, he simply shocked her when did she not comply.  It disturbed her that he was he obviously an intelligent man and may have been downright savvy as a human being.  It would have been easier to ignore him, easier to brush off what he said, if he’d been a stupid canine.

 

“Great way to get someone to converse with you, dogbreath,” she wanted to say.

 

“I don’t know,” she answered him after a pause.  “I’ve never paid attention.”

 

“Let’s perform a little experiment.”  He chuckled, his deep, raspy voice filled with satisfaction.  “I’ll lower the temperature and we’ll see if that lump in your belly starts to move any slower.”

 

She thought he was simply blabbing his mouth, trying to get a rise out of her.  When he held up a controller, she braced herself for the collar on her neck to run lightening down her body.  But when he pressed the button nothing happened.  He lifted his finger from the button and pressed down on it again.  She felt no shock.  “What do you think cold is, Pretty Girl?” he asked, leaning on the glass.  “It’s pretty warm in there right now.  84 degrees.”  He turned his red hued gaze to the remote in his hand.  “Maybe...74 degrees.  Do you think that’ll be cold?”

 

She glared at him.

 

He smiled, pressing the button slowly over and over again.   “83, 82, 81, 80, 79, 78, 77, 76, 75, 74.  There we go.  Nice and cool for you.  Room temperature.”

 

“Don’t you think I live in room temperature, you dumb mutt?” she wanted to hiss.  She didn’t, though.  A ten degree drop in temperature in a short time was nothing to sneeze at.  Though she would easily survive it, and eventually be fine at the 74 degrees when her body adjusted, the adjustment period would be uncomfortable, she knew.  

 

He came back each day, “To check on my Pretty Girl,” he said.  Whenever he addressed her, she felt as if she wanted to vomit up what was left in her long stomach.  She was grateful for the small consolation of him never referring to her as Medusa.  As it was, his gazing at her from the other side of the glass unnerved her.  His red eyes gave the impression that he was manic, his laid back demeanor that he was sociopathic, the glee in his voice that he was simply crazy.   She didn’t know if he actually was any of those things, but just the notion of him being such made her heart race.

 

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you yet,” he told her on one of his social calls.  “Master Shredder has no need for you, really, besides being bait.”

 

Medusa hissed at him.

 

He snickered.  “If I fished, I used you for bait, because that would be fittingly ironic.  But I don’t fish.  I could eat you, I hear that snake tastes like chicken.  You think you’d taste like chicken?”

 

“No,” she replied, “I’d taste like rabbit.”

 

“That’s a good one,” he laughed, tapping the glass.  “You’re funny, Pretty Girl.  But if I ate you, it would take me a year, there is so much of you.  Unless most of you is stomach.  Which I wouldn’t doubt by the size of your meal there.”  He pointed to the protrusion in her body.  “Now, I have thought about electrocuting you to death and stuffing you,” he said.  “But then I’d have to wait for that cut to heal so my trophy wasn’t marred.”

 

“Cut?”  Medusa glowered at him.  “This thing on my side isn’t a cut, it’s a puncture!  It needs two sets of stitches, you cur.”

 

“Don’t be exaggerating your injuries,” he admonished.  “No one likes that.  A warrior is supposed to move through the pain.”

 

“I’m not a warrior,” she hissed.

 

“Oh?  Then what are you?”

 

“Your death knell.”

 

He laughed again, a grating sound, rough and deep.  “Doesn’t look that way to me, Pretty Girl.”

 

The next time he came, he brought the remote control with him.  “I think it might be a little too warm for you in there,” he said.  “I wouldn’t want you to get dehydrated.  And we need that meal to last a whole year, because you’re not getting anything else.”

 

She swore at him.

 

“That’s not nice,” he said, pressing the button.  “73, 72, 71, 70, 69, 68, 67, 66, 65.  Let’s see if that cools you off a little.  Perfect sleeping temperature.”

 

So she slept, since the temperature was perfect for it.  Just as with the last drop in temperature, she was fine once her body got used to the drop.  It was the time in between that was uncomfortable.  She would shiver, a reminder that she was not completely cold-blooded.  Her nose would get cold, so she tucked in the middle spiral of her body. 

 

“The bulge there seems to be moving down your body nicely,” he noted the next time he came to visit.   She raised her head from the darkness of herself, blinking at him sleepily.  “We don’t want that.  After all, you won’t get fed again for another 337 days.  Gotta make that bunny last.”  He held up the remote control and smiled, showing all of his teeth.  “What temperature do you think would slow your metabolism down enough?  I’ve been reading a lot about snakes, you know.  Know your enemy is one of the first things my sensei taught me.”  He laughed, a raspy, bark.  “55 degrees? That’s the temperature of the earth.  Snake burrow underground in the winter, don’t they?”

 

“I don’t know,” she replied.  “I’m not a snake.  I’m a snake mutant.  And I haven’t done any research on them.”

 

“We’ll see how you do.”

 

She was usually very slow at 55 degrees, but could get herself moving if she had to.  She would be beginning to spend her time under blankets by this point, sleeping with her mother or brothers or all three.  Her body, on the insides of her corkscrew, was warm enough, but the outsides occasionally ached.  She tried to twist herself every so often, so that her outside was inside and her inside was outside, which made her tighten up and ache with the chill before her formerly comfortable half of her body adjusted.

  
  


Bradford came to visit again, leaning on the glass and simply watching her.  She ignored him, All he can see is coil of green diamonds, anyway, she consoled herself.  But she could feel his eyes on her body and she had to fight down the urge to shudder to the point that it made her sick to her stomach.  She kept waiting for the shock collar to go off.

 

“You alive in their?”  Bradford asked, tapping on the glass.

 

She debated whether she should lift her head or not.  If she didn’t, he would probably use the shock collar.  But at least she would have the dignity of only putting her head up when she was physically hurt.  But then he’d have the satisfaction of hurting her.  If she raised her head now, he got the satisfaction of her being a prisoner doing what he said and she wouldn’t get shocked.

She raised her muzzle from the center of her helix and blinked at him with her outer eyelids, her inner ones remaining closed.

 

“You look chilly in there.”  He shook his head.  “Is it chilly?”

 

Medusa bit back a nasty comeback and instead only flicked her tongue.  She could still smell the rotted corpse at the back door.

 

“Aw,” he pouted.  “Not in a talking mood today?  That’s too bad.  I was thinking of raising the heat a little bit, but since you’re being rude…”  

 

Medusa’s eyes went wide, her inner lid raising slightly at the mention of warmth.

 

“How about we go to 44 degrees.  That’s pretty chilly.”  

 

He couldn’t be serious.  That was only 12 degrees above freezing.

 

He held up the remote, chuckling.  His finger pressed  the button as Medusa watched the number on it continue to decline until it hit 44.  “See you tomorrow, Pretty Girl,” he told her, kissing the glass before walking away.

 

44 degrees worried Medusa.  She had never been by herself, uncovered at 44 degrees.  Ever.  Her mother didn’t allow it.  Her brothers didn’t allow it.  There was nothing but Medusa-duty from November until spring.  44 degrees was full on November weather.

 

Even if she hadn’t eat an entire mutant, she didn’t think she’d be hungry in this cold.  There was nowhere in the room that was even close to warm.  She pressed herself against the glass, the light and ambient temperature heating her a tiny bit.  She shivered constantly, the muscles under her scales burned.  Sometimes she would cry, a strip of coziness down her cheeks, until the cold hit it, turning it icy.

 

“Seem like we’ll get that meal to last now,” Bradford said the next social call.  “Don’t cry, Pretty Girl.  I’ll come to check on you every day, so you’re not lonely.  I promise.”

 

Just what I need, your company, she closed her eyes again.  Well, at least the bag of hair by the door doesn’t stink anymore.


	134. Chapter 134

“Everyone knows what they’re doing?” Slash asked, a little too loudly for his liking.  The drone of the huge fan on the floor of the terraria room made it difficult to hear his voice in his own ears.  He wasn’t entirely sure the others could hear him.  He looked to each of the six of them in turn.  

They all nodded solemnly, serious expressions on their faces, their bodies crouched in the small space in which they’d stuffed themselves.  Such places were not abundant in this part of Shredder’s lair, but they’d managed to find one, and cram in it. 

With Arcos’ leg fully mended, it had taken them only part of the afternoon to come up with a plan, and now in the early night, they were implementing it.   The bear has massaged the patch where his wound had been, complaining that it was tight, “Like after a workout.”

“Sorry, Teddy Bear,” she’d apologized.  Apparently, from what she was told by the others, she hadn’t let him go after the skin had healed over.  Or after the hair had begun to grow and reached its summer length.  It wasn’t until Arcos had cried out in pain that Leatherhead had knocked Phoenix off of her son.  The incident, while leaving her with a heady giddiness at being able to accomplish something she’d been trying to do for years, disturbed her.  What good was being able to turn on the healing tingle if she couldn’t turn it off when she was finished?

“We get in,” Leatherhead answered Slash’s question.

“We get Medusa,” Phoenix continued.

“We get out,” Arcos added.

“If reinforcements come, we hold them off until Medusa’s cage is opened and one of us can carry her out if she needs it,” Aries indicated the larger of the mutants.

“And we smash as much as we can in the process,” Pete whistled.

“I doubt you will be smashing much of anything,” said Rockwell, waving his hand at the pigeon  “Get to it.”

Without another word, Pete flew out of the small alcove where they hid, swooping down ungracefully to catch the stream of air made by the fan.   Then, like a hawk taking wing, he slowly spiraled down toward the control panel in the middle of the room.  Phoenix was surprised he could fly so gracefully.  All she’d seen of him so far was something that might be called flying, simply because the rest of them couldn’t do it.  A creature that was more adept at it might call it falling from the sky.  

As he glided, he soared  over a great pit of mutagen that was positioned at the front of the room.  It was stories tall, the amount of mutagen in it was frightening.  Phoenix wasn’t sure she’d seen that much of the blue-green stuff in her entire life combined, much less in one place.  It swirled, changing colors ever so slightly, in an almost hypnotic way.  How many of these creatures, in all of these enclosures, had been changed because of the stuff in that vat? she wondered.  Each time Pete passed over it, Phoenix had a horrible feeling of grabbing him and dragging him into it.  

Animals and animal-hybrids began to clamor at the sight of him as he descended.  The noise seemed unnaturally loud to her, carrying to her group of mutants over the hum of the hug fan at the bottom center of the chamber. But the fly mutant at the computer below did not seem to notice.  He kept his giant head, which Phoenix felt sure was going to fall off his neck at any moment, facing the giant screen in front of him.  That made it particularly easy for Pete to land behind him, grab him by the antennae, and pull him backward.

With their designated signal being given, the other six bolted from their crowded hiding place to their pre-assigned destinations in the huge chamber.  Slash, Leatherhead, Arcos, and Aries sprang to the various levels of the terraria, glancing in each box for any sign that one contained a boa constrictor mutant.  Their footsteps were heavy with their weight, Phoenix winced at the clanging against the metal floor.  Somebody’s going to hear, she told herself, but that wasn’t part of her role in the plan.  Rockwell floated down, with Phoenix jumping about behind him, to the center console, where Pete was attempting to subdue the fly.   

Phoenix almost choked when she saw the keyboard.  While it all looked vaguely familiar, it was obviously constructed from largely Kraang components.  She couldn’t understand a single thing on it.  “Can you work this thing?”  Her voice was incredulous.

The chimpanzee didn’t look at her as he sneered.  “Of course, I can.”  His long, simian fingers began to press buttons and pieces of what appeared to be a touch screen.  Strange symbols began to flit across the large monitor, along with arabic numerals and Greek letters. 

“You can read that?”  Phoenix was feeling more stupid the longer she stared at the screen.  While her knowledge of ancient Greek allowed her to identify the letters, the way they were used in the obviously mathematical equations was lost on her.

“You aren’t supposed to be watching me,” Rockwell snapped.  “You’re supposed to be watching everything else.”

She bit back a nasty retort and turned to scan the circular, multi-storied room.   Her job was to make sure that anyone who happened to come into the room, or escape from a cage, was picked off before the four mutants above had to meet them.  She had trouble seeing past the edge of the walkway on each level.  Seeing what was in the cages from her position was impossible, so she couldn’t even help with directions.  She decided that she didn’t like being a lookout from down below.  It was not a good vantage point at all, and she knew she’d have to put that much more force in a bullet for it to reach her target.  

“A little help here!” Pete squawked, bringing her out of her reverie.  He wrestled with the fly, holding him by the upper arms, as he was attempting to reach for a red press button with one of his clawed hands.

“You never press red buttons, buzzy,” Phoenix said, darting between his pincher and the control console and expecting to block the appendage.  “They always spell trouble.”

The mutant buzzed loudly in reply, lifted his arm and brought it down to swipe her out of the way.   She went flying across the platform, ramming into Rockwell from behind.  She crumbled to the floor, the breath knocked out of her, but unhurt due to her chimpanzee pillow that broke her careen.  Stunned, she struggled to get back to her feet, she and Rockwell tangled up in each other.  She’d been thinking, “He’s only a fly,” when she’d tried to intercept him.  It had dawned on her too late, that ”only” a fly the size of a human was not only a fly.  The strength in those skinny appendages he called arms was immensely more than hers.  Gotta respect the insects, she derided herself, finally getting her balance.  

Pete seemed to be faring little better than he was before. However, now that Phoenix had some distance between she and them, it looked they were having more of a tussle than an actual fight.  It was simply the two of them trying to keep the other off of them so that the fly couldn’t hit the button.  “Keep him away from that, Pete,” she said annoyedly.

“Will you shut up?” Slash growled from above.  “You’re going to alert the whole place that were here.”

“Like your loud stomping isn’t?” Arcos replied.

“Where is she?” Aries voice carried down to the control panel.  

Phoenix could not hear a reply for the fly.  “Get away from zzzzzthat!”  He reached his pincher toward Rockwell, who seemed to be oblivious as to what was going on around him while making progress on the computer.

“Chut, you.”  <Hush, you.> The Phoenix walked over to him and kicked him in the stomach as he was attempting to get out of Pete’s grip.  Her foot met no resistance when she made contact with hm.  The fly let out a buzz and doubled over.  “He’s got a human torso.”

“He’s got my hand!” Pete cawed.

“Pete!” Phoenix huffed, coming up behind the pigeon and fly to subdue the insect who was now lying on the floor.   In one of his pincers, he did, indeed, have Pete’s hand.  The pigeons fingers were wiggling widely, so it looked like the fly’s arm was even more deformed than it actually was.  “This isn’t that hard!”  she snapped.  “Sit on him!”

As the words came out of her mouth, the fly stood up and sent her sprawling into Rockwell again.  She tried to catch her footing, but rammed the chimpanzee mutant into the console before she could.

“Do you mind?” he snapped.

“Yes,” Phoenix snarled at him.  “I mind you taking so long to figure that out--”

“I found her!” Arcos called.

Rockwell turned back to the control panel, after noting where Arcos was standing.  He was on the fourth level.  “Now to find the control for that section of cages…”

Pete sat on the fly’s back, almost as if he were on a pegasus, the fly’s wings trying to bat him in the beak.   “Not so easy, huh?” he told Phoenix.

She gave him a sidelong look, her lips pursed, and then kicked the fly’s head.  “Shut up, you dung eater!”

The fly didn’t seem to like that particular name, for his thrashing increased, despite Phoenix’s boot making hard contact with the side of his head.  However, Pete’s weight kept him pinned to the ground, so that she was able to concentrate on the upper levels again.

“Is she OK?” she called up to her son.

Aries ran to his brother, he could hear Slash and Leatherhead bounding to join him.  He blinked several times into the cage to clear his eyes, because he was sure that he was seeing things.  His sister lay curled in a coil near the far edge of the room, or the aquarium, or the cage, or whatever it was.  It wasn’t quite any of them.   It had a large branch in it, like one might put in a terrarium for a pet bearded dragon.    She was knotted in the back corner, with a pile of what looked like decaying bones and fur at the opposite one.  There was a dark brown smudge on the glass-like exterior wall.  He knew what that color was, and didn’t need to search his sister’s body to be sure it was blood.   But what struck him was none of these things.  “There’s frost on the glass!”  He put his three-fingered hand on it to feel it was frigid.  “Is she alive?”

Arcos banged on the glass with his paw, a flat sound echoing back to them.  

The snake in the terrarium didn’t move.

“Is she OK?” his mother called again.

“We don’t know yet,” Aries answered down to her.

“Get the cage open,” Phoenix exclaimed.

“I’m trying,” Rockwell asserted.

Slash and Leatherhead came up to the cage, both of their brow ridges furrowed.  “She’s still alive,” Leatherhead assured them.  “They are using cold torture on her.”

Aries didn’t ask how Leatherhead might know that.

“She’s not responding,” Arcos hit the glass once again.

“If she was dead,” Slash replied, “she wouldn’t still be in there.”   

Medusa slowly raised her body, her head emerging from the middle of the coil.  She blinked her black eyes several times, keeping them covered with her inner eyelid.  Then her eyes went wide, she flicked her tongue out, and mouthed something.

“What?” Arcos asked, putting his paw to his ear.  “We can’t hear you.”

Slash raised his morning star above his head, but Leatherhead grabbed his wrist.

“That is going to alert someone with the noise,” he said.

Slash looked beyond Leatherhead to the entrance of the terraria room.   “Too late.”

Arcos, Aries, and Leatherhead turned simultaneously to see Bradford at the entrance of the chamber.

“You’re not supposed to tap on the glass,” the dog mutant said.  “It disturbs the animals.” 


	135. Chapter 135

Slash cracked his morningstar into the glass as the mutants at the terrarium each drew their weapons.  Instead of running at Bradford however, they all began to attack the clear material that separated them from the boa constrictor inside.  Four loud crashes reverberated through the chamber, their echoes swallowed by the hum of the fan.

The mutant dog jumped to the railing, meaning to keep one from falling to their death at the entrance level, and leapt toward Medusa’s terrarium.  Leatherhead turned to meet him, leaving the others crack at the glass-like enclosure. While in mid-air, Bradford let out a high pitched yelp of pain and rolled onto the story below.  Gingerly touching his side, he plucked a crimped bullet shell out of his flesh.

Another set of blows rapped through the chamber, and two more bullets whizzed through the air toward Bradford.  He dodged them easily, forgetting the four mutants above him trying to bust through the glass, and turning his red, glowing eyes to the center console down below.  Two more projectiles came toward him before the chimpanzee turned from the control panel to the woman holding the slingshot.    

“Run!” Rockwell shouted at Phoenix.  

She fired another shot at the dog mutant, who shifted out of the way by jumping down another level.  “Get the cage open!” she demanded.

“It’s a trap!” Rockwell said.  “They’re after you!”   

She saw Bradford’s red eyes glowing at her, like a demon from Hell.  She shot another two bullet shells at him,  both of which bounced off of his hard skeleton.   Her brain tried to process what Rockwell had just said, but it seemed all she could concentrate on was getting another set of shots off.  The mutant dog was not going for the men at Medusa cage.  He was acting as if they weren’t even there. He was coming at her.

Dread filled her chest, so that she wanted to shake her head.  She fired another two rounds at him, both missing him.  He couldn’t be after her.  He had no reason to be after her.

When he was too close for her to get another shot at him, Phoenix sprinted to the side, grabbing the railing and leaping off of it into the air.  For a brief moment, she thought she would have nothing to grab onto, she fell through the air uninhibited.  Then her hand hit a round rail, jerking her arms slightly.  She swung up and around, landing so she was facing the way she’d come.

Bradford has no issue following her.  Not only was he on her tail, he had managed to knock Pete off of the fly and into Rockwell.  The fly, now free of the great weight on his back, lunged at the large red button.  His large pincer pressed down on it, an a deafening alarm began to sound throughout the entire chamber.  She had no doubt that it was just as deafening through the rest of the building.

“Get the cage open!” she screamed, jumping from the landing to the level below.  She nowhere else to go but up or out, so she made a mad dash along the cages.  Crustaceans in armor all clamored at her as she passed by their enclosures, beating their hands and pincers against the glass-like front.  Each time one came at her from the side, she winced.  She knew in her mind that they couldn’t reach her, but that did not make her body believe that the great beast that looked as if it were going to tackle her believe it.

She could no longer pay attention to the center console as the mutant dog came closer and closer to catching her. Reaching the end of the aisle, she turned the corner, only to see the mutant fish with robotic legs at the end of this aisle.

With a flurry of French swear words flitting through her head, she jumped on the railing, in the exact same way Bradford had done when he began his chase, and leapt up as high as she could.  She grabbed the bottom support beam, swung herself upward, and landed on the second level.

The four mutants at Medusa’s terrarium stopped their attempted break out at the arrival of The Shredder, preceded by his cadre of mutants. In a wave, they came at the four of them.

Slash, Leatherhead, and Arcos all braced themselves for the confrontation as the tiger, rhino, and warthog leapt at them.

Aries, however, turned and began running running down the landing.  “I’m going to get them off of Mama’s tail.”

Slash nodded at him, bringing his morning star to bear, and swinging at the rhino. 

“Rocksteady crush you,” he said in his thick, Russian accent.  “Make pretty table from your shell.”  He flung his head to the side, his huge horn deflecting Slash’s weapon.

Leatherhead and Tiger Claw clashed together, each trying to get the upper hand on the other in a death grip. They fell to the floor, the great croc rolling in an attempt to crush his foe.

The bear mutant let out a battle roar, raising his sledgehammer above his head, and bringing it down where the warthog stood.  Bebop disappeared, the sledgehammer jarred against the metal landing, sending an echoing crash throughout the chamber.

Aries managed to reach the fish with legs before he reached the level that his mother had hopped to.  His axe met a metal leg, deflecting kicks that came at him like blows from a jackhammer.

The fly and Pete had taken to the air around the control console, flying and batting at each other as if they thought they might get the cooties if they touched, their heads arched back, their arms stretched to the limit.

“What’s taking you so long?” Pete squawked to Rockwell.

“People keep running into me!” the chimp yelled with a “hoo, hoo,” his eyes popping out of his head in frustration.  

The Shredder stood like a statue at the railing closest to the entrance, watching.  

Phoenix jumped up another level, losing her footing as she landed.  She sprawled forward, landing in front of one of the terrariums.  In it was a giant spider, only with its two front legs upside down, and human eyeballs where faceted spider eyes should be.  She swallowed a scream and scrambled to the side just as Bradford appeared on the railing behind her.

Her mind whirled thinking how to get away from him.  There was no way she could fight him, and she doubted she could outrun him.  The only time she gained any distance was when she changed levels, but the giant, skeletal dog closed the distance quickly each time.  

The only way she could get away, was get out of the terrarium.  If she did, she would be abandoning everyone...not only The Mutanimals, but her children, all three of them.

She dropped a level, and began to try and make her way to the hallway below, where they had original snuck into the chamber.

Slash crashed to the floor on a lower level, as Rocksteady rammed him, throwing his head to the side as he did.  The rhino jumped after him.  He didn’t have time to block Slash’s morningstar as it made contact with his shoulder, sending him sprawling to the side.

Leatherhead was thrown back, his stomach scratched with TIger Claw’s feet, his claws fully extended.  The croc crashed into Medusa’s terrarium.  The snake was slowly--very slowly--slithering her way toward the clear partition.

Arcos barely dodged a purple laser that whizzed at him from where Bebop had just reappeared.   While the wart hog looked ridiculous as he danced around, it made his lasers were no less deadly.  Arcos ducked and lunged at his adversary, only to find the spot empty again.

Aries swung his axe back and forth, each time knocking a metal kick to the side.  The fish jumped into the air, and made to come down on the ram’s head.  Aries stepped to the side, grabbed the metal appendage, and threw Xever across the aisle.  “I got a hard head, Gillbreath,” he said.  “Clomping on my head isn’t going help you much.”

“Don’t worry, Lambchop,” Xever replied, taking out his knife with a flourish.  “I will just field dress you here, and leave your head the way it is.”

“Enough of this game,” The Shredder said, his deep voice carrying over the din, despite the fact he did not raise it.  In a moment, he was on the other side of Phoenix,  blocking her path.  He simply stood, as if he were an impenetrable wall.  She stopped, looking behind her, Bradford almost her heels,   Then, she felt a tight pressure on her head as her hair was grabbed, and she was lifted entirely off the floor.  “Enough!” Shredder’s voice boomed through the din of the fighting.  “Drop your weapons,” he said, then dangled Phoenix over the railing.  “Or I drop her.”

She glanced down, and immediately was dizzy with the spinning fan taking up her vision.  “Boys,” she cried.  “Don’t you dare!”  Her last word was garbled as Shredder shook her violently.  She reached up to clutch at his forearm, her scalp smarting so that tears came to her eyes.

She heard a clattering of weaponry and the fighting stop.

Shredder put her down, remarkably lightly considering his grip on her hair, and looked her up and down.  The relief of having the pressure on her head free was immediately replaced by  Phoenix’s heart stuck in her throat.  The feeling coming off the man was terrifying, more frightening than anything else she’d ever experienced, save her for lone memory of being in Kraang captivity.  The little of his face she could see was scarred, one of his eyes whited over.  He bent down, so he was almost eye level with her.  Her eyes went wide and she felt the blood drain from her face, as she wanted to swoon away from him.  “You had better be worth it,” he rumbled.

He stood up, and turned from her dismissively.  “TIger Claw,” he said.  “Escort the bird out.”

The tiger mutant bowed, jumped down from where he had been engaging Leatherhead, to the console below.

“You’re letting me go?” Pete squawked.

“You are a lucky pigeon,” Tiger Claw told him.  “Go fly away while you can.”

“Why?” asked Slash.

“They want Splinter to come,” Rockwell said.  “They’re using her as bait.”  He glanced up to where Phoenix stood, trapped between Bradford and The Shredder.

With one of his large paws, Tiger Claw prodded Pete toward the entrance, the pigeons long toes clinking on the metal floor.

“No,” Phoenix shook her head, that couldn’t possibly be true.  “Splinter can’t come. He’s running around like a wild rat in the sewer somewhere!”

Bradford let out what sounded like between a growl and grunt.  “She hasn’t seen him,” he said.

“The rat has his mind back,” Shredder told her, his voice laced with disgust.  

Relief  swept through her, even as she knew it was misplaced.  He was alright.  He was alright, and this monster of a man had seen him!  “He still won’t come here because of me.”  She was obviously confused.  “Why would you think he would do that?”  None of this made any sense.

The Shredder looked toward the entrance to the terrarium.  She followed his gaze, to see a racoon mutant, a guilty look on his face.

“Sparks?” she asked in disbelief.  She must be imagining things, the leader of the Inleters couldn’t be standing there, free, in the company of this terrifying man.

But hearing his is voice proved she was not hallucinating.  “He’ll come and get her,” the racoon paid her no attention, only answering The Shredder’s look.

“He had better,” the armored man said.  “Or the next meal the snake gets will be you.”  He waved in her direction, “Take her to the dungeon.”

Bradford came up behind her and put his bony hand on her shoulder.  She felt a slight pinch and then the world went black.

  
  


 


	136. Chapter 136

Phoenix awoke with the feel of cold concrete against her cheek.  She was somewhere humid, the smell was musty and slightly rank.  Her head was spinning, even with her eyes closed, which didn’t seem to want to open.  When she did, she saw she was in a dimly lit cell, like something out of a fantasy novel dungeon.  The cell was empty except for a bucket, no, it wasn’t a bucket, it was a chamber pot, but the rank smell wasn’t coming from it specifically.  It emanated through the entire place.

 

What happened?  Oh, she remembered.  She looked at her shoulder, where she’d felt the slight pinch before losing the rest of her memory.  It sported a large, purple bruise, though it didn’t hurt when she moved it.  She poked it and winced.

 

Darn Vulcan Death Pinch.

 

However, she had to give it to the mutant dog.  That was a pretty cool trick.  She was going to have to research how to do it when she got out of here.

 

The thought made her heart sink.  She stood up, as if doing so would battle against the feeling, and put her hands against the bars of her cell.  She could see no one in any of the cells, or in the hallway between them.  

 

“Hello!” she called, not at all expecting to hear a reply.

 

“Oh, you’re awake.”  The warthog that she’d battled in the alley months ago came into view from the shadows down the hall.  “Took you long enough.  I was wondering if you were a gonner.”

 

She blinked slowly.  “Where are my children?” she asked in a deadly voice.

 

“Where they belong,” he said.  “In cages.”

 

She glared at him.  “In the same kind of cage as Medusa?”

 

The warthog laughed, as if she’d told a joke.  “That girl is something!”  He shook his head.  “Yeah, that’s where we keep all the animals.”

 

“And you’re not an animal?” she seethed.

 

“Oh, honey!” he laughed again.  “I’m not an animal.  I’m a force of nature.”

 

“She awake?” the unmistakable voice of the rhino came from the shadows down the hallway.  He emerged to stand next to Bebop, his horn and skin shining in the low light.  “Shredder says bring her, when she awakes.”

 

“He’s not wastin’ any time, is he?” Bebop replied lowly.  He then turned to the little healer in the cell.  “Come on, then.”  He got out a set a of keys.  “Time to have lunch with the big guy.”

 

Was it lunch time?  She didn’t feel hungry, but had no idea how long she’d been out.  As she walked with Bebop and Rocksteady on either side of her, her mind raced.  I have to get out of here, she told herself.  I have to.  But she saw no way to escape.  Each time they passed an area where she might make a dash for it, the warthog put his hand firmly on the back of her neck.  Though his fingers weren’t particularly long, probably due to his mutant form, they wrapped more than half way around her neck.  And she was no stranger to the strength of these mutants.  She hadn’t met one yet that couldn’t easily beat her toned arms in a arm wrestling match.  It would take very little for him to squeeze the life out of her.

 

They took her through four levels, until they were at the very top of the Pretty Building.  Two of the Footbots stood guard over huge doors.  They opened them, and The Phoenix felt she had walked into a horror movie.

 

It was not lunch time, the darkness that penetrated the windowed room attested to that.  The floor had a path, with water on either side, leading up to a dias with a throne.  Like a king, The Shredder sat in it, back straight, legs perfectly mirroring each other, each of his hands resting on the arm rests.  She couldn’t tell from his eyes, the only part of his face that he could see, what kind of look he had on his face.

 

Several of his mutants were in the room, Tiger Claw, Xever, and Bradford.  And Sparks.  The racoon stood off to the side, as if trying to hide, unsuccessfully, in the shadows of the chamber.  Bebop pushed her gently, so that she began walking.  She couldn’t look down, the water on either side made her dizzy, as if she were walking on a bridge at a great height.  The warthog stopped her a short distance from the dias.  She stared up at the masked figure, wanting turn and run the other way, and making herself keep her eyes on him, giving the charade of being brave.

 

She had no idea if it was working or not.

 

He leaned forward, his almond eyes squinting.  “So you are the healer of mutants,” he said, his voice smooth and deep.

 

She did not answer him, it seemed a rhetorical question, after all.

 

He stood up, and his presence seemed to swell when he did, so it engulfed her, pressing on her as if to take her breath away.  He stopped just in front of her, not bending to look down.  It took all of her willpower not to lean back, to keep her back straight and simply crane her head to look up at him.

 

“You will heal my daughter,” he said simply, as if saying so made it so.

“Excuse me?”  Her voice shook, but she hoped he didn’t catch it., that he did not know enough of her voice to know when it was quavering.

 

“You,” he bent down, so his face was only inches from hers.  She could see her breath condensing on his metal mask,  and she knew her eyes were wide, despite her attempt to keep calm.  “Will heal her.”  

 

“What in the world makes you think I’ll do that?” she demanded, her voice still shaking.

 

He didn’t answer, simply walked past her, as if she wasn’t there, and his presence, his pushing, against her receded.  

 

She let her breath out in a sigh of relief.

 

Bebop twisted her forcibly, so she was facing the other way, and pushed her to walk after The Shredder.  As if his hand on her back pressed a button inside of her, anger burst forth in her chest like a fist pounding on her sternum.  Anger at being afraid, anger at being impotent bounced about her body.  Her gaze swept the room, and finally landed on Sparks.

 

There was an open path to him, as if everyone in the room had magically moved away to create a way for her.  For a split second their eyes met, and she saw no remorse on his racoon-y face.  

 

Without thinking, she sprinted toward him, a part of her surprised that no one stopped her.  The racoon mutant didn’t even have time to steady himself  for her assault and she was on him, a feral cry escaping her lips.  She knew she was saying something, but she wasn’t fully aware of what it was.  Her hands gripped at his fur, her feet scrambling on his body as if she were climbing it.  He fell backwards, his claws raking her arm.  She felt the stinging of the deep scratches, but they receded quickly to the back of her brain.

 

Then she was being pulled off of him by the skeleton dog, and he was laughing, as if the entire thing was a joke.

 

“I helped you!” she screeched at Sparks, kicking her legs out as she was dragged back..  She expected the world to go black, for Bradford to administer his Vulcan neck pinch, but he didn’t.  He simply held her, suspended above the ground, shaking with laughter. 

 

“Helped me?” Sparks stood up, rubbing a spot on his neck that was devoid of fur.  “What I remember is a conceited, righteous little human being ordering people around like they were beneath her, and then wanting to be lauded for her efforts.”

 

The Phoenix felt like she’d been slapped in the face.  “None of you would have lived if it wasn’t for me,” she seethed.

“That wasn’t living.  That was surviving.  We want to do more than survive, and now we can.”

 

“You--you--”  No adjective to describe him would come to her.

 

“Enough!” The Shredder’s voice bounced off the glass walls and floor, echoing throughout the chamber.  “You can rail against her for her offenses on your own time,” he said. “Now, she is on mine.”

 

Bradford dropped her on the floor, so she was facing away from Sparks, toward the heavy metal doors, still chuckling.  “You’ve got some spunk,” he said in his gravelly voice.  “I see where Medusa gets it.”

 

She glared at him.

 

He only laughed.

 

They walked in silence, then, down the many corridors and floors, until they once again emerged in the terrarium room.  

 

She looked around again as she walked, and again every time a path for her escape came evident, it was physically blocked by someone.  Sparks, she noticed, stayed in the back of the troupe, and would not catch her eye.

 

The pain in her arm began to grow, the stinging almost a burn from where Sparks had scratched her.  She looked down to see the edge of her t-shirt sleeve torn, the scratches slowly oozing blood.  She took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate, to do what she’d done to Arcos’ leg only a day before.  It was difficult to do, if she concentrated seeing the smudges that hovered over her wounds on her arm, visualized the closing and feel the tingling at the same time, she couldn’t walk.  She stumbled once, then gave up on the attempting to heal herself plan.  She’d have to try it when they stopped. 

 

And trying did not mean it would work.

 

They walked downward, until they reached the terrarium room.  Phoenix had managed to surmise that it was underground, and that the dungeons were either on the same level, or one level above or below.  The numerous cages seemed even more ominous from her vantage point at the entrance, a sick menagerie resembling a freak show.  All it needed were people to pay and walk down the metal isles gawking at the creatures inside.  She looked quickly to see if she could see anyone she recognized, and she caught sight of Dr. Rockwell, though the chimp did not seem to be aware of her.

 

She was pushed again,  and the group of them walked until they came to a specific terrarium.

Phoenix recognized the poor creature inside.  It was the pretty, white snake, with mouths for hands, her opalescent scales glittering in the heat lamp of the glass enclosure.    She lay curled in a coil, much like her own Medusa did, when resting.

 

“This is your daughter?” she asked, turning to The Shredder.

 

“She was mutated,” he said, not looking at her, but at the snake in the cage, “by those turtles and their rat master.”

 

She doubted that she’d been mutated by Splinter and his boys.  Phoenix knew how the mutation process worked, it required mutagen.  The Kraang had mutagen, and Splinter had been hiding from them.  How would he have gotten a hold of a canister to purposely mutate this girl?

 

There was a moment of silence before Phoenix said, “I can’t change someone back from mutated.”

 

Shredder turned to her, his eyes revealing no emotion at all.  “She can change herself back.”

 

Phoenix shook her head.  Surely she’d heard him wrong.  “That’s not possible.”  She felt she was being toyed with, the butt of a joke she didn’t understand.

 

_ Kindness is in your power, even when fondness isn’t,  _ the unbidden thought said.

 

She ignored the voice that was her voice but not her voice in her head.

 

“Her mind is missing,” he replied, as if it were a physical thing that could roll out of one’s head and underneath the bed to hide.  He finally turned to look at her.  “You will get it back.”

 

She thought back of when she’d encountered the girl, that she’d been on the edge of that madness that sometimes takes mutants when they transform.  It happened to some of them right away.  It happened to others more slowly.  She didn’t know which category the girl fell into.  It didn’t matter.  “I can’t..” she began.  “It doesn’t work that way.”

 

For the first time, she saw some feeling in the man’s eyes, but it was only for an instant.  The world world suddenly whooshed by her, before she actually felt his hand on the back of her neck, his leather encased fingers digging into her skin at either side of her spine.  Her face was rammed against the glass of an enclosure so hard, she had to close her eyes to keep them from ramming the glass also.  When she opened, she did not see the pretty, white serpent mutant she was expecting.

 

She saw Medusa.

Her mouth dropped open, despite the pain her nose and forehead from being rammed against the surface, she realized she wasn’t at the same terrarium, but the one next to it.  The Shredder had moved so fast, she hadn’t realized just how far he had moved them.  She put her hands up, as if she could reach through the material and grab her daughter on the other side.

 

Her daughter raised her head, her black eyes widening at the sight before her.  She was moving slowly.  To slowly.  She flicked her tongue in the air, and Phoenix saw that it was tinged blue.  Suddenly, the temperature of the glass-like material hit her, it was downright cold.  The temperature in the enclosure must have been close to winter weather.   Then the metal collar clamped around Medusa’s neck began to light up, and arcs of electricity flew up and then back to down her, making her curled body convulse like a seizure.

 

“Stop!” Phoenix screeched.

 

“Each time you deny my command, one of your children will be hurt.  The Shredder’s face was next to hers, she could see his reflection in the glass.  While her breath made condensation on the cage, his didn’t, like he was a ghost, a demon, that didn’t breathe.  

“Each third time, one of them will be hurt irrevocably.  Each third time after that, one of them die.”

 

Medusa stopped seizing, her head falling onto her curled body, her inner eyelid drawn, her tongue lagging out like a panting dog.  “She’ll freeze,” Phoenix whispered.

 

“She will pay the price for your disobedience,” Shredder growled.

 

_ Kindness is in your power, even when fondness isn’t ,  _ the unbidden thought rang in her head.

 

Then she was jerked away from Medusa’s cage, back to Karai’s,only the glass was down.  Bebop and Rocksteady were holding her at bay with wands that looked exactly like the ones the Kraang used to prod their prisoners...she had a flash of one being used on her.  But that couldn’t be right….

 

She was released, thrown forward into Karai’s terrarium.  She hit the wall with a thud, her ears ringing, but not loud enough for her not to hear the slide of the front wall raising to trap her and the serpent mutant inside.

 

*****

 

The quote on kindness given to Phobe  by the unbidden thought in this chapter was spoken by Samuel Johnson.  The actual quote is “Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.”


	137. Chapter 137

Phoenix did not even get to open her eyes before she felt her body being crushed.  The feeling was strangely familiar, as was the smell, cinnamon and reptile.  While Medusa had never attempted to crush the life out of her, she’d been hurt more than once by the boa constrictor’s enthusiastic hugs.

This was not a hug, however.  This was a death grip. Slowly tightening, trying to break bones and sinew, the purple and white snake mutant hissed loudly.  Her fangs were inches from Phoenix’s face, she could see that, unlike Medusa, Karai had a zigzag of saw-like teeth all the way to the joint of her jaws.

 “No!” Phoenix tried to cry, but no sound came out of her mouth, and, more disturbingly, no air went back into her lungs.  As sparks began to dance at the edge of her vision, one of Karai’s hands, a small snake head, seemed to float by her ear.  In desperation, without thought, she turned her head and bit it.

She caught it with its mouth open, and heard it give out a small cry of alarm.  The hand’s mouth closed on hers, Phoenix felt its fangs sink into down into her tongue and up into her jaw.  Along with a stab of pain, the copper of blood filled her tastebuds.  However, the crushing in her body released.  She released her hold on the hand, gasping in air.  The hand let her go at the same time, and Karai backed away, hissing at her forcefully.

Phoenix gulped in air, her chest burning all the way up to her jaw.  Then she realized that her jaw was burning in a very different way.  She wiped her mouth, her hand coming away bloodied.  She’d forgotten about the snake mutant’s venom!  The room began to sway and she wasn’t sure if it the room itself or her.  She leaned heavily against the wall, her legs having trouble holding her upright.

“Mama.”  She heard Medusa’s voice, faintly, on the other side of the wall.

“Medusa!” She twirled, pressing her hands against the wall, as if doing so would make it dematerialize and let her hold her daughter.

“Do what he says,” the boa constrictor mutant pleaded.  There was a desperation in her daughter’s voice that Phoenix had never heard before.  Panic began to strike her again, what else had they done to her, other than put her in an almost freezing room, that she would say that?

Phoenix turned, just in time to see Karai strike at her.  She managed to grab both of the girl’s wrists at the snake-hands’ necks, but not stop the force of being thrown against the wall once again. Her head bounced, right into the snake’s nose.  Karai retreated again, this time to far corner, as far away from Phoenix as she could get.

The feeling of heat receded from Phoenix’s jaw, and she broke out in a sweat, tinged slightly in green and reeking of venom.  She gagged involuntarily with the smell and Karai hissed, trying to flatten herself against the wall.  She must think I’m venomous, Phoenix thought, the room spinning slightly, so she sank against the wall once again.

_ You are capable of kindness, even if you are not capable of affection, _ the unbidden thought told her.

You take kindness and shove it up your butt, I’m trapped in a cell with a venomous, mindless mutant!   __

Wiping away some venomous sweat from her forehead, she glanced at the glass, surprised to see her reflection.  But past it stood all of the Foot Clan mutants that had escorted her to the terrarium room, along with The Shredder.  Tiger Claw leaned over to his master, saying something in his ear, Phoenix couldn’t hear what.  The masked man nodded.  Bebop elbowed Rocksteady, a huge smile on his porcine face, and pointed at her, shaking his head.   

He thinks I am going to die in here, she realized.

Anger swelled in her again, pushing the fear away.  She had raised a boa constrictor, a snake that could take this little white thing down in a heartbeat.  That same boa constrictor cowered at an angry Phoenix, obeying her with rarely a question.  She does not do it because The Phoenix is her mother, she told herself.  She does it because The Phoenix has power!  

Looking at the snake mutant, she saw none of the sentience present when she’d last met the girl.  Softening her eyes, she could see nothing wrong with her, there were no dark patches in her light-that-was-not-a-light surrounding her physical body.  Even at her head, the swirling patches that denoted madness were not present.    The girl wasn’t crazy.  She simply…wasn’t.

Karai hissed again, blinking sideways lids, that reminded Phoenix of Medusa’s inner lids.  She seemed to be gaining her courage to attack again, perhaps detecting Phoenix’s anger, perhaps deciding in her primitive brain that her only way out of this situation was to eliminate her enemy.

Way out!  Phoenix looked around frantically, surely there was a way to get out of this room.  The glass was not an option, if it kept Medusa in, it would keep a thousand Phoenixes in.  She noticed a door across the wall from Karai, a back way to enter the cell.  She dashed toward it, grabbing the handle and pulling.

It was locked.

Karai sprang at her, her body lifting off of the ground in her attempt to cross the room.  Phoenix lunged in her direction, summoning the golden tingling into her hands.  She didn’t know what she could do against the snake mutant, she had no weapon, she knew her power was not in violence, even the power she held over her children.  They could easily crush her with no thought at all.  As she collided with Karai, she clamped her hands, now scorching, against Karai’s cheeks, pushing her head away from her face.  She felt the two mouth hands clamp on her shoulder, burning as they injected venom into her.

“Stop!” Phoenix pleaded, the golden ants steaming into the girl’s head, her mind’s eye seeing them spread out like a great wave, engulfing her head and her neck.   Phoenix’s shoulders began to go numb, and the feeling of heat spread through her arms, almost pinching her elbows and wrists with the pain.  How much venom could a hand that was a snake mouth have?

Suddenly, the pressure of Karai pushing forward in her hands stopped.  The green eyes blinked white, sideways eyelids.  “Friendssssssss,” she sibilated slowly. 

The burning her shoulders brought tears to Phoenix’s eyes.  “Yes,” she managed to say, though her voice was rougher in her ears than it sounded in her mind.  “I am your friend.  I want to help you.”

She felt the snake mouth hands release her with a stab, the fangs exiting her skin bringing another wave of tears, so that they over flowed.  They stung as they ran down her face, and she knew, without having to see them, they were tinged with the venom that Karai had pumped into her.  Her arms were heavy, too heavy to hold up, and she dropped them from Karai's cheeks.  As soon as she did, the tingling in her palms stopped.  “I am your friend,” she managed to say again, though her words were slurred.

She fell to her knees, the concrete floor jabbing her kneecaps as she landed on it.  She fell forward, catching herself, pressing her hands hard against the flooring to keep herself up.  She saw, through her peripheral vision, Karai reach for her, one of the snake hands putting its tongue out to smell the air near her face.  “Friend,” Karai said again.

Phoenix tried to nod her head, but she couldn’t get it to move.  Her arms gave up, and she dropped to the floor, managing to turn her head, so her cheek hit the hard surface instead of her nose.   She barely felt it, her neck and ears were numb, and the world around her seemed to lose its sound, slowly being muffled as if cotton was being stuffed deep into her ear canal.   Her vision began to blur, the world looked like an impressionistic painting.  Karai hissed and backed away from her, just as she felt a dull jab in her gut.

“She still alive?” Bebop asked.

All could see of him was a brown and purple blob, but when she felt the dull ache again, she knew he’d kicked her.  She wanted to curl into a ball to protect herself, but her body wouldn’t respond to what she told it to do.  It had a mind of its own, and it was telling her to lay like a lump of flesh on the floor.

“Yes” she heard Bradford say, though the entire world was only pale lights now.

“Why’s she drippin’ green?” Bebop asked, nudging her with his toe.

She told her body to leap up and bite him in the leg, but it didn’t respond.

“Fazzzzinating,” the fly, only a dark blob, came into her field of vision, before her eyes finally closed of their accord.

“Take her back to her cell,” Shredder’s voice was harsh, unforgiving.

It seemed only a moment before she was back where she had started.  The darkness of the dungeon was a relief after the bright heat of Karai’s terrarium.  She laid her cheek on the concrete.  It stank, but even with that stench, she could still detect the smell of snake..


	138. Chapter 138

Dr. Rockwell watched, and felt, each day, as The Phoenix was brought down from wherever the Foot Clan was holding her, and thrown unceremoniously into Karai’s terrarium. Without his helmet, the impressions he received were muted, and with so many beings present, it was sometimes hard to differentiate between the owners. But after the novelty of seeing someone thrown in the cell with Karai, the entourage became only a small group, always consisting of Stockman and The Shredder.

Time blended together, even for him with his brilliant intellect. There was no way to tell the passing of days and nights. There were rhythms, but they were not necessarily on a schedule. They were fed, the lights were turned out, and they otherwise ignored.

He wondered what was taking Pete so long in his mission. He was sure that The Foot had made it clear what he was to do when they had set him free, it was in the forefront of their minds when they lead him out of the hall. So what was the hold up?

He had to concentrate on whomever he was trying to read, closing his eyes, picturing his target in his head. When he concentrated on The Phoenix, he could sometimes hear words in her voice, faint and difficult to understand. “Friends,” would sometimes echo in his mind, or “kindness.” But more often than not, he felt her fear, her anger, her desperation, and with each passing visit to the terrarium, her growing hopelessness. Kindness, despite the word whispering in his head in her voice, was not one of the emotions he detected.

Stockman, who watched with buzzing anticipation, was filled with morbid curiosity and jealousy. Revulsion came from him, which struck Rockwell as highly ironic, considering that was what the chimp felt when he looked at the grotesque face of the fly.

When he concentrated on Karai, he read the mind of an animal, all instincts. Fear, punctuated with respite of peace at being left alone and warm, drifted to him with distinct clarity. But every once in a while, always when The Phoenix was present, he would distinctly receive the impression a young woman in his mind, very much human and cognizant, aching for release and revenge.

When he put his attention on The Shredder, the only other person who always present during these visits, he read the same emotion, every single time: hope. 

###

Phoenix could smell nothing but the stench of venom seeping out of her skin in green tinged- sweat or tears. It burned her eyes when she cried it, and it stung the more delicate skin of her body when she sweated it out. But it as the stench of it that she couldn’t stand. She longed for that first day in the dungeon, when she was surrounded by the stink of excrement and snake that was not her daughter.

She had demanded to see her children, not expecting to see all three, but maybe getting to one of them, before she would have another ‘session’ as they called it, with Karai. “I won’t help you again,” she seethed, though she sounded weak, even to her own ears. 

The Shredder had said nothing, which was more frightening to her than if he had raged in her direction. 

Tiger Claw had chuckled, as if what she said was a joke. “Woman, you are a fool.” He proceeded to show her how foolish she was, by grabbing her and dragging her to the terrarium. 

The entire way, she watched Shredder’s cape swaying as he walked in front of her, his steps making no sound at all. Again, she wondered, in the back of her mind, how that was possible when he was such a big man and his boots looked so heavy. Aries could take a few lessons from him, she thought. 

The unbidden thought said, Kindness, even when not affection. 

Her stomach clenched, as if she’d be sick. He could take kindness and shove it up his unarmored rump!

They passed Karai’s cell and stopped at Medusa’s. The boa constrictor was pressed against the wall she shared with the other serpent, attempting to eek out what little warmth she could from the adjoining cell. Without a word, as if Shredder and Tiger Claw were psychically connected, Tiger Claw stuck a digital thermometer in Phoenix’s face.

It read 38*.

The tiger mutant’s clawed finger pressed a button, and the numeral began to sink, 37*, 36*, 35*…

It took her a moment to understand what was happening, the thermometer was at 33* when it finally did. “No!” she screamed, trying to dash to the transparent partition of the cage.

Medusa raised her head, so that her entire torso was up in the air, and shook her head. “Don’t do what they want, Mama,” she called. Her voice, usually breathy, was very faint from behind the glasslike material.

“Every time you disobey me,” The Shredder turned to her, Tiger Claw pressed the button again, 32*, “one of your children will be injured.” The tiger mutant pressed the button again, 31*. “Every third time you disobey me, one of your children will be injured irreparably.”

“She’ll freeze!” Phoenix cried, still struggling against Tiger Claw’s one hand. She felt like a bug trapped by a bird, unable to move and watching her life flash before her insectly eyes before she was eaten. 

“If she is still alive after three hours,” Shredder said, “I will allow the temperature in her enclosure to rise above freezing.”

“If she’s dead after three hours, I won’t help you at all,” she growled.

“Then your sons will die next.” The statement was said with no emotion. “After they are dead,” he went on, “I will not kill you. I will give you to Stockman, and he can experiment on you as you heal yourself, over, and over again.”

She was in a nightmare. She had to be. This was the kind of thing that people wrote horror novels about, not the kind of thing that real people, even mutant people, endured in real life. Her face twisted in agony as she looked at Medusa once again, who was still slowly shaking her head, her inner lid pulled over her black eyes.

“You will save my daughter,” the armored man told her.

“I can’t undo a mutation,” she said, tears beginning to stream down her face. This was all hopeless. She was in a bet she couldn’t win. Her children would all be killed, and she would be doomed to be a guinea pig, right back where she had started, almost 20 years ago.

The Shredder took two steps toward her, and bent down so he was face to face with her. “You will save my daughter,” he growled, “or your daughter will die.”

She believed him. So when they threw her in the cage with Karai, she tried with all her mind and might to bring the girl’s mind back. 

When she looked at the girl with soft eyes, she couldn’t see anything wrong with her. Her-glow-that-was-not-a-glow was fully golden, dancing with health, with only the slighter less-glowy parts that denoted an old wound that had scarred over. 

The serpent sometimes went for her as soon as she entered the cell, and sometimes she recoiled. Phoenix wasn’t able to determine what made her react in what way. But no matter what her initial response, the little healer ended up getting bitten, and the end of each session was her collapsing on the floor, only to wake up in the dungeon.

She needed to come up with a different strategy. She wasn’t good at strategy. She listened to her intuition, but so far, all she’d gotten was the instruction of kindness, and she was not feeling kind at all.

She was feeling terrified.

She was out of her league, and she knew it. She had no recourse, no way to fix or get out of this situation, and despite Shredder’s desire to set a trap for Splinter, she knew he wasn’t going to come for her. He had no reason to. So she was trapped here until The Shredder was tired of her, then she would be thrown away, in the same fashion as they threw her in the cage with Karai.

Now, she was fighting off the girl’s snake hands, leaning backward to try and avoid her head. She’d already been bitten by both hands, the snake heads sinking their teeth into her skin, the burn of venom searing through her muscles. She noticed only a tiny difference in the amount of time that Karai was a subconscious animal and a semi-conscious being, but there was an increase in the time. When the opalescent snake mutant was conscious, the stopped her attack, looked like she recognized Phoenix, and retreated away from her.

Phoenix darted her head to the side again, Karai’s fangs barely missing her. Unlike Medusa, Karai had teeth other than her fangs, while they didn’t emit venom, they still hurt, leaving little serrated cuts on her skin. The entire she fought with her, she tried to bring the tingly feeling out of her body and into Karai. She wished, fervently, that the girl’s face wasn’t so long.

Then, as if her nightmare had taken a turn for the worse, the girl’s head began to shrink. The muzzle sank into itself, the nose flattening out and then raising again as the nostrils came together. The face widened, the eyes turning to the front of the head. The skin began to darken to the color of flesh, and black hair sprouted on the top of the head. Her eyes turned from completely green to an amber iris, with the whites of the eyes showing in fright. She was acquainted with them, she knew, before they had fully transformed. She would know them anywhere. She felt horror, not just at the grotesque thing that was forming in front of her, but at Karai’s eyes.

They were Splinter’s eyes.

And they were wide with terror and pain. Is that what Splinter’s eyes would look like if he were frightened and in pain? 

Kindness, said the unbidden thought, if not affection.

The poor girl, she said in the back of her mind said. Tears filled Phoenix’s eyes as a compassion she’d not felt in a long time flooded her chest.

Shredder had been right. Somehow the girl could change from human to mutant, but nothing more than her head converted from one form to another. It was gross, so that she was nauseated looking at her, a stark contrast to the warmth in her chest just above her lurching stomach.

“Help me,” the girl moaned, her voice rough and deep.

“Oh God,” Phoenix cried, as words hit her like fists in the face.

Father

Leo

Lies

Friends

Revenge

Each syllable was filled with pain, a torture that seemed all too familiar to Phoenix, though she didn’t know when she had ever felt such torture as what this girl was feeling right now.   
“Karai!” The Shredder’s voice was right beside her, desperate and full of longing. The voice of a parent who wants their child. The same tone of voice for which she called for the snake mutant in the next cell every time she saw her own daughter.

It made her break her concentration, and the human headed snake backed away from her, out of her hands. As soon as Karai did so, the face began to stretch out again, widening and lengthening, the eyes growing green and the face opalescent white and lavender. 

“No!” Shredder turned to Phoenix, who was already wobbling with the effects of the venom in her system. But before blessed numbness could come to her, she saw Shredder coming at her, felt the back of his hand make contact with her face. The metal of hand of his gauntlets hit her first, but she heard a crunch coming somewhere from her face when his actual glove touched her skin. Her feet were off of the floor, and she rammed against the wall with such force, that the pain in her shoulders put the pain in her face to shame. It was only then that blackness came, and it was a relief.


	139. Chapter 139

Phoenix couldn’t remember the last time hurt so bad.  No, that wasn’t true.  She hurt worse than this when she’d fallen off that five story building back during the Kraang Invasion.  That was more painful than this.

The Kraang Invasion...so much had happened since then, and it had been, what, four, five months?  Such a short time from falling off a building to lying on the concrete door of a dungeon.  That would make it more likely that this was a nightmare, and that she might wake up at any moment.  Her pain was left over from falling off of that building, and the stench was the sewer, where they were holed up in The Burrow.  She would wake up and be beside Splinter one of the mats she and the kids had made, covered with a sheet made of bits of fabric.

When she opened her eyes, she was not in The Burrow.  The stench was not the sewer.  Splinter was not at her side.  She was in a dark cell, and pain shot through her face and her shoulders.  She brought a hand to her cheek, and felt her skin sink in much farther than it should have at her touch.  Agony bolted through to her nose and her eye, so that her eyes watered.  Her cheekbone was broken.

When she tried to move her shoulder, the feeling indicated that it was most likely broken, too.

How had she fallen off of a building and broken nothing but ribs, but now she was crushed from a hand slap?

Because it was one helluva hand slap, she told herself.  The Shredder had cried out for his daughter, a sound that pulled at Phoenix’s heartstrings, and then, in the blink of an eye, he’d crushed her face in.

And this wasn’t a nightmare.

She tried to sit up, but her shoulder protested loudly, so that she laid down again.  “How long have I been lying here?” she muttered to the quiet around her.

“For two days,” a familiar voice told her.

Her inclination was to whip around, fly at the bars and attempt to strange the racoon mutant until he was dead.  Instead, she took a deep breath and steadied herself where she was.  “Go take a long walk off a short pier,” she said.

“You’re on a short pier,” Sparks replied.  She heard the claws on his feet click against the concrete as she walked toward her cell.  “And you’re about to be thrown to the sharks.”

Anger swelled slowly, numbing some of the pain in her shoulder.  She managed to sit up, and turned to face him.  “And what do you care if I’m thrown to the sharks?”

Sparks winced.

“Ah,” Phoenix tried to feel some satisfaction at his discomfiture, but her anger prevented her from doing so.  “So you’re about to thrown to the sharks, too?”  Talking hurt her cheek, which hurt her eye and her nose.

“You don’t get it,” he growled.  Taking a step toward her, he sneered, showing one of his long eyeteeth.  “He’s running out of patience with you.  When he runs out of patience, that,” he pointed to her face, “happens.”

“And that’s what’s going to happen to you?” she taunted.  Her voice cracked, she knew that it lessened the effect she was hoping for.  Hurt began to mix with her ire.  If he didn’t look and sound like Sparks, she would not have recognized the racoon mutant in front of her..  How could she have been such a poor judge of character?  “Because your precious plan isn’t going to work?”

“It is going to work,” he seethed.  “You’re the one who put me in charge, remember?”

“I remember,” she groused, the words gripping her chest.

“We follow my orders.”  He snarled slightly.  “All except for you, that is.  You get to tell everyone what to do.”

“Usually the person who fixes other people tends to,” she replied.

He took another step forward.  “Because of you,” he spit slightly as he spoke, “I lost half of my group.”

“Me?” she scoffed, indignation seeping through her words.  “Because of me, you had a group!”  She winced, the pain in her cheek stabbing her when she closed her mouth.  

“And that’s all we had,” he said.

Her voice cracked again.  “We helped you.  We showed you how to clean your water, how to heal yourselves, how to--”

“You showed us how to drink sewage without dying?” He’d taken another step toward her, his claws clicking the only other sound in the dungeon.  “You taught us how to make mats out of plastic bags so we didn’t have to sleep directly on the concrete floor?  That’s not living.  That’s surviving.”  His dark eyes shined, his muzzled pulled back the longer he spoke  “We have clothes here, beds, food.  Real food, real beds, not remnants thrown away from the humans.”

The humans...as if they were something different than he was.

“I thought I’d gotten rid of my problems with your ‘brother’ decided to go his own way.  But he took all of my best warriors with him.”

“What do you need with warriors?” she asked.  “It isn’t like you went out defending anyone.”

“Says the woman who goes around with three hulking mutants behind her.”  He laughed.  “Not so helpful now, are they?  Even your snake gets the wind knocked out of her when that collar goes off.”

Phoenix scowled, but it immediately left her visage when her face reminded her that it didn’t want her to move its cheek.    “What will they do to you,” she asked, “when your plan doesn’t work.”

“They don’t do anything,” Sparks said.  “He does.”

“Will he break your cheek?  Or is he nicer to his own cronies?”

Sparks took a deep breath, as if steadying himself.  “You need to worry about what is going to happen to you,” he replied.

“Splinter isn’t going to come for me,” she said.

“Yes he is,” Spark’s voice was quiet.

She laughed, a tinny sound through her swollen mouth.  “He and I aren’t on the same side.”

“There are only two sides,” Sparks told her.  “Those who are allied with The Foot Clan and those who aren’t.”  He leaned down, his black, wet nose shining in the low light.  “Those who aren’t, die.”

She glared at him.

“Just like all of you are going to.”  He turned away from her, “I’m supposed to tell Shredder when you wake up.”

“That’s a real step up,” she called after him.  “From leader to errand boy.”

 Half way down the hall, he whirled around to face her.  “You know,” his voice was deadly.  “Medusa might not die.  Bradford, the big dog that looks like he should be a zombie?  He’s taking a real liking to her.”

The anger that was quietly swelling inside of her breast exploded through her chest, down her belly, and up her shoulders.  The pain that was kissing her collarbone and upper arm went numb.  One of the great reliefs of having Medusa be who she was, was Phoenix had never had to worry about  **that.**    She crawled to the bars, planting both of her hands around each one of the metal poles.  “If he touches her,” she clenched her teeth, “I will kill you and him, very, very slowly.”

To her own ears, her threat was nothing, how was going to be killing anyone with no weapons?  There was no way she could take any of these mutants hand to hand, even if she had to opportunity.  But Sparks eyes were wide.  “There’s nothing you can do about it,” he answered, but his voice had a shake to it.

His eyes, she realized, weren’t on her face, but on her shoulder.  She glanced down at it, thinking that it must look uglier than she anticipated.  The numbness that had engulfed it only a moment before, broke into an intense tingling.  She could feel, rather than see, the black that would be in her glow-that-was-not-a-glow closing, the bone under her skin knitting together, the skin covering it fading from the black and blue of broken blood vessels to the pale pink of healthy flesh.

She watched in a state of wonder, as if someone else was making it happen, and not her.  But then, the realization hit, she was the one who did this.  She was the one who could do this to other people.  She had healed Arcos, she could do it to herself.  Closing her eyes, she willed the tingling to crawl up her neck.  It did not.  It isn’t going to work, she thought, I can’t do it.

Then, a prickling that was so intense it almost hurt, detonated in her cheek.  She could feel bits of herself moving in her face, her cells, her bones, her skin, rearranging to the correct place, size, proportion, that they were meant to be.  Behind her closed eyelids, it looked like the sun was shining brightly.  The light, red and diffused, began to close in on itself, organizing itself , just as her cheek was doing.  The colors swirled, red, yellow, orange, and the shape too the form of a great bird, made of fire, flapping its wings.  The heat from the fiery feathers burned her face.  But then, it was over.  When she opened her eyes, she alone in the dungeon, dark and dank, with her face and shoulder feeling a little tight, but no longer in pain.

###

Rockwell watched, surprised when Phoenix walked, flanked by Bradford and Stockman, to the terrarium that held the snake mutant Karai.  She had been carried out in her last visit, her body obviously broken and bruised.  Now, however, she had only a black and blue mark on her cheek, as if someone had slapped her, open handed, hard across it.  The swelling she’d sported the last time he’d seen her was not present at all.

The same scenario was enacted; Phoenix thrown in the cage, faint impressions of anger, helplessness, and hope.  The Shredder stood at the glass, unmoving, watching whatever it was on the inside of the cell that Rockwell could not see.

Bradford edged over to the adjoining cell, and tapped on the glass.  Rockwell could tell by his body language that he was taunting Medusa, his head was tilted slightly to the side, his hip bone cocked out slightly.   The emotions coming from him were smug, he was filled with satisfaction and superior.  The dog mutant had the upper hand, he knew it, and he liked it.  When Rockwell concentrated on him, he detected a begrudging respect for the captive young woman.  Bradford thought of her as a worthy foe, strong and resilient. A desire that resembled competitiveness, but with maliciousness laced it, also came from him, much like the feeling a schoolyard bully emits to those sensitive enough to feel it . Rockwell found no surprise in Bradford at Medusa’s ability to take the physical punishment he was doling out, and that worried the chimpanzee.  From what he could discern from the few thoughts he was able to receive from The Phoenix, she was intensely upset at the treatment of her daughter.  Either Phoenix did not have as much faith in Medusa as Bradford did, or Bradford had too much faith in her.  Neither boded well.

A commotion started at Karai’s cell, bringing Rahzar from Medusa’s cell to the adjoining one.  All of those present pressed upon the glass, and Rockwell could detect a strong wave of rage, the desire for revenge, a lust for blood.  The Shredder motioned for the partition to open.  Stockman flew down the to controls, pressed a few buttons (it was an impossibly simple set-up, Rockwell could have done much better himself) and the glasslike material lifted.  Before it raised much, there was a thunk against it, and the fully human form of Karai fell in front of The Shredder’s feet.


	140. Chapter 140

Within three days of not being bitten, the stench of  Karai’s venom was gone from her system.  She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not, the reek of the dungeon was much clearer to her nose without the snaky acridness tainting it, but Phoenix began to feel somewhat normal again.  The room no longer spun.  Her tongue and lips no longer felt swollen.  The marks where the girl’s many mouths had bitten her were all healed, her face did not hurt and the amount of water she was given each day did not quench her thirst.

To her doctor’s mind, they were all good things, things that showed improvement of the patient and were to be lauded.  Except that she was trapped in a cell, apparently forgotten, save for her once a day visit from Xever.

The fish mutant was not rhythmic in his visits, and she hated to admit to herself that she was relieved when he arrived with her food and water.  “Can I have some more water, please?” she asked.

He surprised her when, with his next visit, he brought her a half gallon of it instead of only eight ounces.  “Looks like Shredder isn’t done with you yet,” he said.

She bit back the question, What does that mean?

“Splinter isn’t going to come and get me,” she told the fish.

“Oh,” he said, drawing out the word with his Brazilian accent.  “I know that.  I think even Shredder knows it, but he’s holding out hope.  He sent out that dumb raccoon to try and stir up some trouble.”  Xever leaned against the far wall, crossing his metal legs and bringing one of his fin-hands to his face to examine it.  “He gave him forty eight hours.”

“Until what?” she asked, hoping she hid the sinking feeling in her gut.

 “Until he stops giving you water altogether?” Xever shrugged.  “I don’t know.”

She knew that should have helped her feel better, for some reason, it didn’t.  “What has he done with my children?”   She gripped the bars of the dungeon cell.  “The Mutanimals?”

“ **He** hasn’t done anything with them,” Xever said.  “Shredder doesn’t care about the Mutanimals, or your kids.”

She regarded him, her eyebrows drawing together.  It seemed to her she was presented with a bunch of puzzle pieces, but they weren’t going together the way she would expect. 

Xever pushed himself up off of the wall.  “You are under the mistaken impression that this has anything to do with you.”  He shook his huge head and clicked his tongue.  “Nothing ever has anything to do with you,” he told her.  “That’s the first rule of the streets.  You’re the only one who cares about you.”

“That’s not true,” she drawled.  “I have many people who care about me.”

“Only when you can help them.”  He smiled, showing all of his teeth.  “Once you can’t, they throw you to the wolves, just like anybody else.”

“Not everyone is like Sparks,” she said, sneering.  “Or you.”

He wagged a finger at her.  “You’ll find that you’re wrong about that, little woman.”  He began to clomp down the hall.  “Everyone cares about themselves.  Look out for number one.  You didn’t learn that with as long as you’ve been on the streets?”

###

The sound of a scraping walk echoed through the hall of the dungeon, catching Phoenix’s attention.  She went to the bars of her cell, and tried to wedge her face through them.  Despite her small head, she was not able to see the bobcat mutant until she was almost at her cage.  Phoenix recognized her as an Inleter.

“What do you want?” she asked, anger lacing her voice.

“I need your help,” the bobcat said, her ears coming forward.  She wore a tank top and shorts that did precious little to cover up her body.  She’s already covered with fur, Phoenix reminded herself when a bout of disgust hit her.  She probably doesn’t need the clothes in the first place.  She’s wearing them to feel more human.   She was dragging her leg, Phoenix noticed a bloodied bandage on it.

“I need help, too, in case you hadn’t noticed,” she said, giving the bobcat her back.

“Please,” the woman pleaded, her voice nothing more than whisper.

Phoenix turned her head, her green eyes squinted. “Then have Ardillo fix you,” she spat.

“Ardillo isn’t here,” the bobcat replied.

Turning back around to face the bobcat, Phoenix blinked.  “What?”  What did she mean that he wasn’t here?  Had they killed him?  Had he been killed by one of these barbaric people in this building that once must have been gorgeous and was now filled with gangrenous growths?

“He didn’t come with us,” she said, her voice clear that she thought Phoenix already knew this.  “He went with the others that refused to come.”

Her shoulders relaxed as relief rushed through her.  Not all of them had followed Sparks to this place, for warm vittles and cozy blankets.  “Go to the doctor up there, then” Phoenix threw her hand up.  “Let whoever they are patch you up.”

The bobcat’s eyes widened a tiny bit, but enough for Phoenix to notice.  The older woman’s chest constricted with the thought that she’d made the bobcat angry, a vision of her lunging at the bars popping into her head.  But the bobcat put her ears back against her skull, shrugging her shoulders.  “The doctor up there doesn’t help mutants unless he wants to…”

Phoenix laughed nastily.  “Really?  Even here, with your nice beds and food, you’re at the bottom of the totem pole?  So that a bleeding gash doesn’t get medical attention?”

The bobcat did not answer. 

“I hope that bed is comfortable.”  Phoenix turned from her again.

“It’s infected,” the bobcat took another shuffling step toward her cell bars.  “Please.”

_Kindness, when not affection._   The unbidden thought spoke loudly in the quiet of the dungeon, almost as if it were outside of her ears.

Clicking her tongue, Phoenix shook her head.  “Why should I?”

Again, the bobcat did not answer, but stared at her like she was speaking a foreign language. 

Anger erased what relaxation the relief had gifted her with.  “You really think you can come down here and expect me to just up and help you?  From a cell?  When I’m trapped here, because Sparks was stupid enough to think that Splinter would come and get me?”  Tears burned her eyes, but evaporated before they could spill.

With a shake of her head, the bobcat answered, “Everyone knows Splinter will come to get you.  He loves you.”

It was Phoenix’s turn to say nothing, her mouth twisted, the right side turning down the left upward.  “You are a bunch of idiots!” she cried.  “None of you know anything!  He is my enemy, you dolt.  I fought with his children, more than once!  He tore my shoulder to shreds!”  She felt the tears coming down in her cheeks, scalding.  What fantasy were these people living under?

The bobcat looked confused.  “Then why did you help him?” she asked in a small voice.

“Because he needed help,” Phoenix sobbed.  Her chest felt like it was going to collapse into a singularity at the center of her breast, dragging her throat and stomach along with it. 

“I need your help,” the bobcat whined.

Phoenix let a cry, and grabbed for the mutant through the bars.  She managed to catch her upper arm.  The burning in her palm was a tingling mass, pouring from her into the bobcat. Phoenix could almost see the golden light bounce off the fur, while a similar color to her lost Ailurosa’s, it was course.  “Let me help you then,” she seethed.

The bobcat let out a cry and tried to jerk her arm out of Phoenix’s grasp.  The bandage on her leg began to discolor, the blood on it turning from brown to gray.  The bobcat watched her leg in horror as the skin that the bandage touched began to creep over the cloth, enclosing it inside of her leg.  On the far edges, new fur began to grow, as if the bandage was a graph of some sort.  Her leg drew up, and she managed to scramble out of Phoenix’s grip.  She tried to put her leg down, but could no longer extend it all the way.  “What did you do to me?” she cried.

“You needed help,” Phoenix answered, tears still coming down her face, her voice raw.  “I helped you.”

###

With an increase in energy and waking hours, Phoenix also experienced an exponential increase in boredom.  There was only so much staring into space that one could do before one went insane.  Her talks with Xever, which were sometimes very short, and sometimes up to an hour, she guessed depending on what he had to do with his fishy life, were not enough to stem the boredom in her brain.

So her brain decided to entertain itself.  For her, that was never a good idea, as it tended to make up scenarios in which her children were being ill used and abused.  Her mind conjured up images of Medusa’s skin being removed and made into leather.  Of Aries’ horns being shorn off at the root, blood covering his wool, and random mutants drinking to their health out of them.  Of Arcos’ flayed and laid out like a rug, his soft brown eyes no longer his own, but made of glass, staring into space with no life in them.

She realized that she didn’t need to be touched to be tortured.  Just being in here with nothing to do but worry was torture enough to make her go mad.

_Kindness, even when no affection._

I’ll affection your kind derriere, she said back to the unbidden thought.

When she worried, she practiced yoga, yoga was a kind of kindness to oneself, a spiritual practice that was fill the practitioner with love.  She apologized to the voice-that-was-not-her-voice in her head, she could so show herself kindness even when she wasn’t feeling very loving.

Taking up prayer pose, standing straight in the middle of her cell, her hands together at her heart, she took a deep breath in.  Phoenix had heard, while in college, that to strengthen one’s practice, it was recommended that a yogi take up the 108 sun salutation challenge.  She’d never done it.  She raised her hands into mountain pose.  Knowing, now, what she did about yoga’s history, she doubted it was ever intended as the challenge that Western practitioners took it to mean.  Exhaling, she dropped into a forward fold.  Westerners, she included, tended to see challenges as something to overcome, a way in which one could stay the same.  She stretched to a lunge. In yogic thought, a challenge was something to experience.  The goal was not remain the same despite what happened, but to be fundamentally changed because of it.

Knees, chest, chin to the concrete floor.  It was because of that fundamental change that it was rare that these kind of physical challenges were completed.  She had nothing but time on her hands and a brooding brain.  She pulled up into downward facing dog.  Might as well accomplish something while she was here. 

 


	141. Chapter 141

Her mind had entered into blessed silence about half way through Phoenix’s 108 sun salutations.  Before then, she tried to keep her attention on her body, as her mind fought to come up with awful situations that her children might be in.  She imagined abuses The Mighty Mutanimals might be suffering and the hurting she wished she could put on Sparks and the Inleters.  From down in the dark cell, where no sun was filtering to see her doing sun salutations, the dark fed her thoughts.    From that, her mind lingered on those who had not followed Sparks to follow The Foot Clan, little Ardillo and others she did not know.  She wondered who else had left Sparks before all of this.  Was there more than just Balboa and Anser?  Had that been a premonition of what was to come?

 Had she been such a poor judge of character to put the raccoon in charge of the just formed group of mutants?   _I had to_ , she told herself, before putting her attention back on her nose as she put her knees, chest, and chin on the floor.  They would have been picked off like sparrows if I hadn’t made someone step up.

 Spark’s interpretation of her behavior had shocked her to the point where she had avoided thinking about it.  But now, with her body moving smoothly from upward facing dog, her face stretching to the unseen sun, to downward facing dog, the crown of her head pulling her spine toward the floor, her mind followed along smoothly with its thoughts.  Had she been spiteful?  Selfish?  Pretentious?

 Did she think she was better than a mutant?

 But I **am** a mutant, she answered herself, her eyes burning with tears at the phrase.  She moved from a lunge to a forward fold, hanging like a rag doll with loose shoulders.  Her DNA was half alien, she was the same as they were, just without the animal they’d last come in contact with. She was more of the invaders than the mutants themselves were.

 Visions of the Invasion came to her, with the Kraangdroids walking down the street, the Haunted Warehouse falling under laser fire, the round manhole cover that engulfed her vision when the unbidden thought had told her for the umpteenth time, _Consider the floor._

 It had been so long since she’d heard that whispered in her mind.

 Then, her mind went blank, and it was only her and the movement of her body, greeting the sun that shone stories above her head.   The peace lasted for a little while after all 108 salutes were finished, as she lay in corpse pose, her muscles burning from exertion.  It felt good, especially after being cooped up for so long.  Her hips and shoulders felt as if they had spaces about them, the satisfying tingle of stretched tendons made her felt as if she’d actually accomplished something other than simply waiting.

 Listening to the silence around her, she heard scratching to her upper right.  What is that?

  _Consider the floor,_ the unbidden thought whispered.

She smiled.  The floor was simple concrete, probably the basement of the place.  The scritching was not clicky enough to be a cockroach or another darkness dwelling insect.  It was made with something that had non-retractable claws, like a dog, or raccoon, or opossum.  But none of those would be in a dungeon.  What would be in a basement that had been retrofitted with metal bars?

 Her eyes flew open, and she turned on the floor toward the sound.  Staring at her, through the darkness, were the black eyes of a brown sewer rat.  It hissed at her, its long, yellow teeth glinting in the low light, before scurrying off through the bars.  Her throat threatened to close on her as she sucked in air.  A vision of Splinter, the last time she saw him, flashed in her mind’s eye, as he ran from The Burrow into the concrete coated sewer, to be lost, a wild thing.

 He loves you, the bobcat had said.

 Phoenix felt a reflexive tightening in her thigh, and repositioned herself to stretch her leg.  She suspected she’d over-healed the woman’s leg, like she had with Arcos.  Tissue healed over is often a tangle of cells, she knew, which made the resultant spot tight and taut.  The spot where the bobcat was injured ached in her own leg as she thought about it.  I probably made the fibers in the tissue too short, she mused, visualizing the woman’s foot lifting off of the ground.  She must be suffering from one hell of a leg cramp by now.

 Knowing the bobcat might be in pain did not make The Phoenix feel any better.  Nor did it erase the sound of the mutant’s voice in her head.  “He loves you.”

 What would have made any of the Inleters think that?  She stretched her memory back, massaging her thigh.  Many had assumed he was her husband, but she thought that was because he stayed with her. He was obviously closer to her in age than to her children and had an aura of power about him, as if he were a great something, but what the something was, was hidden.  She’d been told by others that she possessed a similar quality, something powerful inside a little interior.  She always laughed at it, telling anyone who would listen that she was quite sure they could do the exact same thing.  She’d never met anyone who believed her.  She had never had the courage to broach the subject with Splinter.  It was too close to reality.

 What the Inleters witnessed, it could not be reality.  They saw the charade, the game that she and Splinter had been playing, they just didn’t understand that it was theatrics.  So they thought his hovering over her that night, his grabbing the hand of that insect before he beheaded her, the few looks they exchanged when she came down from her intense focus on her patient, were all part of him loving her.

 Her eyes began to burn with tears as her mouth tugged in a frown against her will.  She remembered the night she’d spent in The Burrow alone, on his sleeping mat, the smell of him around her in the dark, comforting and intensely lonely.  She could have loved him.

 She was trapped her because they all thought he loved her.

 A sob escaped her.

 “Aww,” came the growly voice of Bradford from the shadows.  “Don’t cry.  You’ve got work to do.”

 She looked up to see him unlocking the door, a mocking smile on his muzzle.  “Has Karai turned back into a snake?”  She tried to make it sound seething, but it came out more as a whine.

 “When she wants to,” Bradford replied.  “But we’ve got another job for you, now.”  He grabbed her by the arm and tugged her up, chuckling.  “We don’t keep people waiting around here.”

 “I want to see my children,” she said, trying, unsuccessfully, to free herself.

 Xever clomped down the hallway.  That’s right, she thought.  I need two people to escort me wherever I’m going.  She wasn’t sure if she that should satisfy or disappoint her.  “You don’t get to make demands,” he said, holding the door open.  

 “I’m not doing a thing for you unless I know my kids are safe.”  She tugged again, and the dog mutant let her go.  She stumbled back slightly, bumping into Xever, who righted her with a shove.

 “Listen, Momma,” Bradford said, “you can come or we can bring you.  It’s that simple.”

 She was still a moment, struggling internally.  She wanted to make them take her, to pick her up, kicking, screaming, and biting, and haul her to wherever it was they were taking her.  Then the image of Medusa, huge and powerful, struck motionless with pain by the collar they had on around her neck loomed large in her vision.  She took a step forward.

 Bradford smiled.

 They didn’t lead her far before they entered a laboratory.  It had several cages in it, all filled with various dogs. Most of them looked like strays, several barked at her and the two mutants with her, followed by several whines.  It was then she noticed each had a bark collar around its neck.

 “What’s going on?” she asked, stopping at the door, so that Bradford had to push in the room.

 “You ask a lot of questions,” Bradford muttered.

 Stockman looked up from a glass jar he was staring into, buzzing when he saw them.  He flew over to her, hovering above the ground.  “You are a faszzzzinating zzzzpezzzimen,” he said.  “If  I had known before that you had Kraang DNA, I would have made better uzzzzze of you.”  He chuckled, a staticky buzzing noise, as if he’d made a joke.

 Looking at him like he was crazy, she felt as if he stole a secret from her.  She hadn’t known she was part Kraang for long, how in world did he?

 “When Rockwell told me,” he continued, like he’d read her mind, “I didn’t believe him.  But the buffoon of a sheep confirmed it.”  He buzzed, and she wasn’t sure what kind of human equivalent noise he was making.

 “Aries is not a buffoon,” she said through clenched teeth.  Several other derogatory descriptors entered her mind, but buffoon wasn’t one of them.

 The fly mutant ignored her, flying over to the jar he had been studying before.  It was then that she saw a type of fat worm, eyeless, its mouth reminiscent of a clawed beak, body segmented and mottled blue and green.  The colors reminded her faintly of mutagen, and then it hit her what they were.   “Those are from Dimension X,” she said with disgust.  

 Stockman motioned with his head, “Put her in there.”

 Her gaze followed where he had indicated, and the disgust at the worms turned to terror.  Bradford pushed her toward a surgical table, straps dangling on the sides, ready to for a prisoner to embrace.  As if someone had grabbed her throat and began to squeeze, she couldn’t breathe.  The room seemed to morph into a sterile, metal space, with no human attributes, no Earthly smells or sounds.  The squeaking, clicking, and wiggling of brains with tentacles and eyes seemed to replace the figures in the room--brains in the middle of robots, and brains riding little spaceships.  “No!” she turned, attempting to barrel her way through Bradford to get away from the table.

 The dog mutant looked confused for a moment, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving her forward.  He picked her up to get her on the table and winced when she screamed, high pitched and desperate.

 “Let me out!  Let me out! LET ME OUT!!” she screeched, as Xever tightened the straps about her chest, hips, thighs and feet.  She thrashed, trying to loosen her bonds, her loose hair flying as she flung her head from side to side.  She began to scream, words being lost in the sound coming out of her mouth.

 Xever backed away, looking at Bradford as the mutant dog laughed.  “I’ve never seen someone so easy to torture,” he said.  “We just strap her in and she goes crazy.”

 


	142. Chapter 142

Every day Bradford and Xever came for The Phoenix and dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the table in Stockman’s lab.  She grabbed the bars of the dungeon cell, and sometimes Bradford would only pull on her a little, just so she was suspended in the air, with her arms or legs around the iron posts and her trunk in his arms.  

“I haven’t had my laugh today, Birdie,” he said.  “Time to get to work.”

“Don’t strap me down,” she would repeat, once they arrived at the lab.  Her words were completely ignored as she was forced onto the table, and Xever pulled the bindings to keep her still.

“This loses its appeal after the first few times,” he said.

“No it doesn’t,” Bradford disagreed, listening to her scream a while before the two of them left.

Her chest and abdomen ached, the scars on her temples, collarbone, back, and thighs burned, despite the fact that the fly mutant did not even go near them.  All he did was place a latex tourniquet on her arm, prick her inner elbow with a needle, and draw blood.  She begged, bawled, and finally lay staring to space, her mind somewhere else than the room filled with dogs with bark collars and worms from Dimension X.  Finally, after how long, she didn’t know, the room came into focus, without the myriad of Kraang and alien equipment that her memory produced, but the pain and burning in her body didn’t fade.

“Please untie me,” she said in a small voice.  “I promise I’ll be still.”  She had to get these straps off, she had to get off of this table.  If she didn’t, she was sure the crushing grip in her chest would make her collapse in on herself, like an implosion she’d once seen in a science fiction movie.

The fly ignored her, so she looked about to ask someone else, but there was no one else in the room.  Stockman was putting vials of her blood into a centrifuge, he’d already set out an entire stand of them, the red and white blood cells separated from each other.  Using a dropper, he took some of the clear liquid from one, and picked up a work with a pair of tongs.  “We’ll zzzeeee,” he said, “if thizzz formulation workzzz to keep the worm and patient alive.”  The worm opened its jaws, and he fed it the fluid from the dropper.

The word ‘patient’ breeched Phoenix’s consciousness.  “What?” she asked.  Her throat hurt and her voice was raw.

“The worm dies if the patient doesn’t have mutagen in their system,” Stockman explained.  “The patient dies whether they do or not.”

She breathed in, ready to scream again, her mind racing with way she could escape and coming up with nothing, when he passed her by and went to one of the dogs in the cage.  “Sit,” he commanded, and the dog did so.  He took the collar off, the dog whining as he did, then commanded, “Speak.”

The dog barked, wagging its tail happily.

The fly put the collar back on, the dog put its tail in between its legs, and it did not bark when Stockman gave it the command to do so.  “Good,” he muttered, as if Phoenix wasn’t in the room.  “Hopefully this combination will work, and then we can move on to bigger and better subjects.”  Holding the worm in a pair of tongs, he placed it at the dog’s ear.  It tried to scoot away, only to be blocked by the bars on its kennel.  In a quick flick, the worm waved it’s body and disappeared into the dog’s ear canal.

The dog cried in pain, rolling on the kennel floor.  It began to foam at the mouth, its body shaking like it was having a seizure.  “What are you doing?” Phoenix asked in horror, but Stockman merely watched the dog writhe.  Then, it was still, its chest not even rising and falling in breath.  He lifted the dog’s ear with one of his claws, and the worm popped out, almost as if it had been ejected with force.

Stockman picked it up with his tongs, watching it wiggle in the air.  ‘Yezzzzz!” he exclaimed.

“You’ve made progress?”  Bradford’s voice came from the hall just before the dog emerged in the lab entryway.  

“The worm didn’t die,” Stockman said agitatedly.  

“Master Shredder will be happy to hear it,” he replied, though he didn’t sound very impressed.  “I’ve come to take the little birdie back to her cage.”

Stockman, his attention fully on the worm, waved his claw dismissively.

Bradford walked to Phoenix’s table, the click of his talons on the floor showing he was not being particularly careful.  The sound clicked in her brain, it seemed out of place, as if it should be louder and heavier. Then she noticed--Xever wasn’t with him.  He was getting her by himself!

Be calm, she told herself, her breathing coming quicker.  Bradford didn’t seem to notice as he unbound her legs.  She left them still, as if she were paralyzed, waiting as unstrapped her hips, and then her shoulders.

As soon as her arms were free, she swung her legs up, thwapping the mutant ninja dog in the back of the head, rolling off of the table, and making a mad dash to the door.  Her legs felt like they weren’t responding to her mind’s commands, but then she was at the entryway, a growl just above her head.

She swerved to the left as soon as she was free of the lab, ramming against a wall.  But it gave her enough room to evade Bradford’s lunge.  He overshot her, landing much farther down the hall.  She ran at him, willing her legs to work as she pushed off into a flip, her hands catching the wall beside her, and vaulting herself up near the ceiling.

Bradford jumped to meet her, but she dropped back to the floor, hitting it in a run.  Now firmly on her feet, she pumped her arms and ran, not daring to look back.  The mutant ninja landed directly in front of her, a distance she didn’t think possible for him to jump, and scooped her up as if she were nothing more than an annoyance.

He laughed, bringing her up to his face, his yellow, glowing eyes crescent moons with mirth.  “I’ve been waiting for you to do that,” he said.

I’m in a nightmare, Phoenix’s thoughts spoke of their volition.  I’m in a nightmare, and I’ll wake up at any moment.  I know I will.

He didn’t put her down, but carried her, flinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.  She struggled, kicking her legs, banging her arms on his shoulders and chest, twisting her body to fall off of him, back onto the ground.  He held her, his shoulder joint digging painfully into her stomach, with a hand that spanned her shoulderblades to her rump.  She was aware of going up stairs, of mutants moving out of their way, and of Footbots that didn’t, and of Stockman buzzing beside them.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.  “I’m not done with her yet.”

“You said you got the worms to live, that’s what you needed, isn’t it?” Bradford asked.

“But the zzzzubject needzzz to live,” he buzzed.  “And obey.”

Phoenix began to pull at the chunks of fur on Bradford’s body in an attempt to get him to loosen his grip.

“You’ll have to take it up with Master Shredder,” he said.  “I was told if she messed up one more time, to take her to him.”

The dark hallways opened up to the Throne Room, the floor a giant water tank with flat, large teethed piranha chomping through it in hopes of finding a meal.  She knew now what her fate was to be.  She was going to be fed to the man-eating fish, her body demolished, the blood still in her system that Stockman hadn’t sucked out would muddy the water crimson, and she’d be no more.

Bradford dumped her in front of Master Shredder’s throne.  She looked up, moving her long hair out of her eyes, to see him stand, staring down at her like she was something he’d scraped off of his boot.

“My patience with you has ended,” his deep voice seemed to invade her head, like he was inside of her.  “Bring her,” he said, stepping down as Bradford scooped her up again.  “Stockman, ready the mutagen tanks.”

Relief flooded through her.  They were going to throw her in a mutagen tank.  That was a much better way to die than to be eaten by piranhas.  

When they arrived at the terrarium room, the view was disconcerting.  After Bradford unceremoniously dropped her, she ran to the railing, her eyes scanning the cages.  The Mutanimals, Aries, and Arcos were still trapped, Karai’s terrarium was still empty, and Medusa was being held with a rod connected to the shock collar around her throat.  She slithered willingly, her black eyes brightening when she saw her mother.

“Mama,” she cried, speeding up.  The collar gave her a small shock, and she stopped, her tongue slipping out of her mouth.

“The mutagen won’t do anything to her,” Stockman was saying, as Medusa was brought to the group.  

Phoenix ran to her daughter, and was shocked when no one stopped her.  She wrapped her arms about the snake, relishing the feel of the tiny, bony things her daughter always had for appendages held her back.  “Are you alright?” she asked, a surge of golden energy filling her to bursting.  She let it loose inside of her daughter, and was comforted by the soft gasp that Medusa gave.

“I’m fine, Mama,” she replied.  “They can’t hurt me.”

From the cuts that quickly healed and scaled over, and the tired look in her eyes, Phoenix knew her daughter was lying.

“I told you one of your children would be punished for your insolence,” The Shredder said, grabbing Phoenix from her daughter’s embrace and dragging her away.  “You did not believe me.”

“I’m not done with her yet,” Stockman whined.  

Shredder threw her to the fly, who stumbled backward slightly when she hit him, but then clamped both of her arms down with his claws to keep her still.  Master Shredder then turned to Bradford.  “Throw her in,” he said.

The world seemed to move in slow motion as the meaning of the words sunk into Phoenix’s psyche.  “No!” she screamed, pulling on Stockman’s grip, but moving forward only a little as he fought to keep her in place.  

The shock collar on Medusa’s neck went off, sending her to the ground, twisting and turning like a dying eel out of water.  With a swift kick from the dog mutant, the boa constrictor slid across the floor to the opening in the railing, and fell into the vat of mutagen below.  The blue green liquid splashed, like thick water, rippling where she’d fallen in and sunk, disappeared below the surface of the mutagen.

Phoenix broke free from Stockman’s embrace, running to the edge of the platform, peering down into the tub of mutagen below.  “No!” she screamed again.  She felt her face going red with her shrieking, and the hot moisture of tears streaming down her face.  

The Shredder grabbed her by the hair and threw her backward toward Stockman once more.  As he strode out, he instructed, “Bleed her dry.”  

  **Author's Note:  On the original site where this story started, it has reached it's 150th chapter!  It is now the length of three and half full length novels, all thanks to you, my loyal readers.  If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't still be writing it.  As a thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far, I am going to hold a raffle.  Each person who has/does write a comment or give kudos to this story between the beginning and the next ten chapters will have their name put in a hat and be eligible for a hardcopy paperback of Season 1 of The Other Side of the City!  
**


	143. Chapter 143

As Phoenix felt the hard, exoskeletal like skin beneath Baxter Stockman’s sweater give slightly as she was rammed against him, the image of what was now her daughter was all that her eyes saw.

As the mutagen drained away, it left a twisted body, still dark green with even darker triangles on a powerful snakes body.  She couldn’t see Medusa’s upper half, it was buried beneath the rest of her physique.  Then, as if rising from the waves of the sea that were her body, she raised one of her skinny arms. 

For a brief moment, Phoenix felt relief, her little Curly Que was alive, she was OK.  But then the rest of her body followed, “No!!!!!!!”

Her head, which had before ended in a narrow bludge, her jaw so skinny that it looked like she had no neck, was now flared at the mandible.  Her broadened jaw gave her a poisonous look, the diamond shaped head that one is warned about as a child when meeting serpents in the wild.  The taper her muzzle was blunted, almost to the point of being square.  Her head rested on a more slender strip of a long neck.  At the base of her throat, where the electric collar once laid, was not a necklace-like set of silver scales, the direction and color making them very distinct.  Her shoulders, broader than before, curved outward.  The muscle under the scaly skin was obvious was she swung her arm down.  Her body swayed,where before had been the monotonous thinness of all snakes, was replaced by a more human-like sternum, wide to match the wider shoulders.  Like before, her chest didn’t sport the telltale sign of femininity in mammals, the small swell that had been there before was larger, akin to a paler green breastplate strapped upon her.   The wide chest cinched into a waist, only to widen again into hip-like surge.  The rest of her body, huge just as before, unfolded as she stretched upward.

She looked up, her eyes were still jet black, but when they looked at her mother, Phoenix could see nothing familiar in them.  Like with Karai, they were animalistic, having life, but no intelligence behind them.  She opened her mouth, her fangs, white, long, and deadly, shimmered.  Then, blue electric arcs danced between them, the silver scales about her neck dancing with sparkly white.

“Bleed her dry,” she heard The Shredder say, and then the scene in front of Phoenix came back into focus.  She saw The Shredder’s cape flutter by her, his boots, which should have made so much noise on the metal floor, making almost no sound at all.

A rage that she’d never felt before, like the snake that was now her daughter, slithered up her spine, exploding in her head.  She threw her arm at Stockman, her forearm slamming into his throat.  It was soft, she noted errantly, giving easily under her blow.  He let her go, clutching at his neck with his deformed not-hands.

She twirled toward Shredder, her hands on fire, her eyes seeing not only his hurts, but the hurts of everyone in her vision.  She  _ knew _ every injury he had...a dull slow healing blow to his shoulder, his ribs bruised, what looked liked various cuts underneath his armor, the blotchy black marks that mimicked burns all about his head.  A frustration mixed with the fury in her, grabbing her heart in her chest and twisting it, trying to snap any connections it had to the blood vessels and leave her empty of anything. 

What do I do with that? the thought was spat to herself, disgust at seeing how to help him being her only current recourse.  Then she remembered Arcos, and the bobcat.

With a screech that sounded like an otherworldly being, she leapt at the leader of the Foot Clan.

He didn’t even flinch. 

Whipping out one of his arms, he grabbed her by the neck before she reached him, effectively silencing her shriek.  She reached out, her palms burning, grabbing his upper arm.  The push of her fingers didn’t even indent his muscled skin, but it was enough contact that the power vibrating in her hands was able to rush into him.  Every dark spot in her vision began to gray, many disappearing altogether, replaced only the light that was not a light.

He gasped, his eyes going wide as they stared at each other.  She watched his turn to the crescent moons of someone smiling.

Then, her world shattered.

Her insides were made of crystal, with a million facets, each one containing a little piece of herself.  She felt, an explosion of glass inside of her, cracking along all of the edges, trailing through the facets that made up her, and falling to the floor in shards, sharp and tiny.  As they fell from the top down, she could hear, rather than see, pieces of them passing by her consciousness, part of the crystal that hadn’t fully fallen apart yet.  

“You have to do well in school, sweetheart,” her mother said, “or you’ll never get into a good college.”

“Hey,” Stephane’s voice was smiling, “you want to go out for a cup of coffee sometime?”

“We’d like you to read at the event, please, Mrs. Lafarrier,” said the restaurant owner. 

“I love you, Mama,” Ailurosa’s voice engulfed her.

A thousand more passed her by, voices, sounds, some only words, some not made by humans, all of them pieces of herself, coming undone.

Then sounds that didn’t belong to her resounded in her head, coming from outside of the crystal pieces,  Some of the words were in a language she didn’t understand, something Asian.  They fell in her head like raindrops, ringing when they hit the shards of crystal at the bottom of herself.

“There is undoubtedly a fascinating story in how my old nemesis came to teach ninjutsu to four mutant turtles. Perhaps I will let one of you live long enough to tell it.”

The sound of flames engulfed her.

“Well done, my daughter.”

“Hamato Yoshi!  You did this!”

Then the noise in her head became so loud that she was unable to decipher anything specific.  It was just a cacophony of talking and sounds, none of them identifiable any longer.

She knew her mouth was open, she knew she was screaming, but she couldn’t hear it.  All she could hear was the stadium of people, moving, talking, banging, pushing, pulling, until everything in her mind, the sound, the sensations, the shards of crystal, all turned to black.

****

The world wove in and out of noise.  

She was cognizant of being strapped to the lab table, a needle in her arm, red liquid in a tube by her her head.  

“Shredder said not to kill her,” Bradford said.  “Hamato Yoshi will come, he knows it now.”

“I don’t like all that magic mumbo jumbo,” Xever muttered.

“It isn’t magic, Fishbreath,” Bradford snapped.  “If you did more than flash your knife and kick, you’d know that.”

“How long do you think she keep this up?” Xever said.

“Azzzz long azzz I give her nutrientzz to replazze the blood,” Stockman replied.

“In other words, indefinitely?” Bradford chuckled.  “Helluva fate.”

She was aware of the sound of flames in her head, as if the entire world was burning, and intense hatred seared at her.  She hated the man in the flames, even as she knew he was being burned alive.  The voice of her brother, filled with anguish and agony, and the cry of a baby, maybe her baby, behind her, nestled somewhere in the cool of the night. 

She was aware of the dungeon, the dank smell, the cool concrete beneath her cheek.  It was a relief after the fire in her mind, sometimes during the blaze, her head would burn, as if her skin was being consumed.  The dank smell was pleasing, in a way, it let her know she in a place, not just in a fire, with a floor, and walls, and water. 

“Hey, you,” a voice she didn’t recognize pierced through the coolness of her consciousness.  She looked up to see three Foot soldiers, dressed in the same outfits as the Footbots, only with their masks off.  They were young men, no, were they really?  She couldn’t tell, only that they were younger than her.

“We got your dinner.”  One of them pushed a plate through the serving slot in the bars.

Was it dinner time already?  Why were they bringing her dinner?  Xever usually brought it, along with several insults.

“Come and get it,” one of the ninja’s set.  He was smiling.  She knew what kind of smile it was, it didn’t make her feel good, but she couldn’t recall what kind of smile it would be called.  Smiles were good, right?  They meant you were happy?

She didn’t want to have to eat, but she was so hungry...wait, did she get food brought to her anymore?  Or was she just replenished with saline in the lab?  Hadn’t she heard something about the IV fluid being enough until the calories ran out?

She willed her body toward the bars, her mouth watering.  She reached for a roll, golden and fluffy.  Taking it, she stuffed it in her mouth, as if afraid that it was disappear.

At the same time, one of the Foot soldiers grabbed her ankle and yanked her leg out of the bars.  She was surprised her thigh fit through it, she didn’t remember it doing so before.  But then she realized that she’d been pull through the spaces, by one leg, and the word for their smiles came to her mind.

Malicious.

The second ninja grabbed her other leg, effectively pulling her flat against the bars.  Splayed on the floor, before she could get her bearing back, she felt the first one reach the the bars and grab the waist of her jeans.

“I hear you like rats,” he said.  “They can’t be that fun.”

“They’re all hairy and have big teeth,” said another.

“We can show what a real man is like.”

One of them who had leg laughed.

“No!” she cried, sitting up.  She clawed for the hands at her jeans buttons, but the man moved out the way too quickly.  So instead, she continued coming forward, reaching through the bars and grabbing the hair of one of the men who hand her ankles.  

Twisting her fist, he cried out, letting go of her leg.  She used it to plant her sneakered foot in the face of the other man holding ankle.  It gave her enough time to scramble away from the bars, to the back of the cell.

She glared at them, breathing heavily.  The one she’d kicked in the face was holding his nose, with blood dribbling down his fingers.  The other two were laughing.

“You suck at being ninjas,” she tried to snarl, but it came out more as a mutter.

“Like Sensei says,” one helped the nose bleeder up.  “You gotta start somewhere.”

As she fell to her side, the concrete cool on her cheek once more, the three of them laughed as they left her, she heard one say, “That’s gonna leaving a mark.”

She was aware of being moved from one place to another, from the cell in the dungeon, to the lab, back to the cell.  “Tang Shen, take me back,” she heard in herself say in a memory, only the voice didn’t belong to her.  It was deep and smooth, and edged with sorrow.  She thought she might burst with the sadness that engulfed her, edged with desperation, like she was drowning and needed to be taken back just to breath.  “I’m a different man,” and she was, she knew she was, so different, if Tang Shen would just take her back, she would show her!

She was in the cell again, lying on the floor, letting the cool air sit about her, still, absorbing the sounds of her breathing.

“Hey, Birdie.”

She turned, seeing three ninjas, she recognized all three of them.  They had their hoods and masks off again, and it occurred to her that she did not matter.  That she could identify them was a non sequitur, she was not any threat to them whatsoever.  Each had a ten gallon bucket with him.

“Since you like rats so much,” one said, “and you don’t want a real man, we got you a treat.” 

She felt something thump against her, the dampness of the room absorbing the sound.  It was heavy and hurt when hit her ribcage.  When she looked down to see it was, she saw a brown sewer rat lying next to her, dead, it’s tongue lolling out of its mouth, eyes staring straight into nothing.

Another thump hit her in her shoulder, then the side of the head.

Looking up, she saw each of the men had a rat in his hand, ready to lob at her.  She turned from them, curling up in a ball as tight as she could, as a barrage of dead rats hit her body.  More often than not, she was hit about the head and shoulders, the obvious place they were aiming.  Her shoulder blades began to ache with the impacts, and a particularly hard throw batted her in the head.  

A collision against her body was accompanied by a low squeak.  At her side, one of the rats, a brown one with black markings, let out another squeak.  The light that was not a light showed that the little animal was not yet dead, a black mark hovered about its head.  Another rat hit her hip, she ignored the thump of pain that shot through her and reached for the surviving rat.  Holding it in her hands, she concentrated on black shadow about its cranium, watching it as, along with the growing pins and needles in her hands, it slowly closed, and the animal began to wiggle in her grasp.  All the while, the dungeon absorbed the impacts of little dead bodies hitting her.  Twice she was hit in the head, and tried to ignore the thowers, until the rat in her hands wriggled out of them, and ran to the bars and down the hall.

With a nasty glance to her tormentors, she put her head to her knees, covering it with her arms, while she waited for the pelting, and the laughing, to stop.

She was aware of a deep voice saying her name.  Not her real name, she thought absently, so it couldn’t have been an angel, but had to be a living thing.  It was a pleasant, deep voice, and she recognized it from somewhere.

“Phoenix, I will have you out of here in a moment.”

She rolled toward the voice, opening her eyes slowly.  She expected them to be dry and sticky, but they were neither.  The first thing she saw was a dead rat in front of her face.  It couldn’t have called her name, could it?  Sitting up, she saw a large rat head, and rat hands, pink and larger than her own, fidgeting with the lock.  She blinked, and the maroon yukata came into focus.

“Splinter!” she cried, scrambling toward the door.  She began to bat his hands away from the lock, shaking her head.  When she did, the room spun, and she swallowed to keep from gagging.  “You have to leave!”

“I will have you out of here in a moment,” he repeated.

His voice was like a balm to her ears, as if they were scratched and she hadn’t known it.  Her chest tightened, the lump moving to her throat, causing her nose to burn and her eyes to water.  Grasping the bars of the dungeon to keep herself up, she sobbed.  “This a trap.”

Lowering his muzzle, so that he could come closer to the bars than it would allow, his gold eyes looked intently into hers.  His ears dropped all the way back to his scalp, and his white brows drew together.  He curled his hands over hers, they were soft and warm.  “I know.”


	144. Chapter 144

When he looked at her, Splinter noticed that Phoenix was paler than he remembered.  While she was porcelain skinned in his memory, now she seemed to be made of marble, with no color at all in her face and arms, the only skin that was showing.  Instead of the corset he was expecting her to be wearing, she had on a simple ladies t-shirt and jeans.  Her green eyes looked feverish, almost as if they weren’t hers, as she looked at him.  But what struck him the most, though, was when he placed his hands over hers, instead of the warm flesh he expected, her fingers were like ice.

With his lockpicks, it took only a few seconds for the spring to release, but it was too long between him entering the dungeon and opening the door.  He sensed the air moving behind him, and thrusting his hand in the bars, grabbed Phoenix’s head and shoved it down to the concrete, his own not far behind.  Two shuriken bounced off the back wall of her cell.

“Stay down,” he commanded her, twirling around without seeing if she obeyed or not.  He brought his arm up to block a strike from Tiger Claw, the two of them pushing each other away so they were on either side of the cell.

“So, the raccoon was correct.  We were all beginning to lose faith that you’d come.”  He laughed, drawing his sword.  “I am surprised.  She doesn’t seem like your type, Yoshi-san.”

Splinter answered by drawing his own sword, positioning his body, breathing deeply to calm himself.  Tiger Claw chuckled, then lunged forward.

Only to cry out in a “Mrow!” as the door to Phoenix’s cell flew open, clipping him straight in the nose.  The tiger mutant fell to the ground with both paws to his face, his yellow eyes wide in surprise.

“There is no type like me, you flea bitten feline.”  Phoenix emerged from the cell, kicked at Tiger Claw’s paw, as he regained his footing.  She stumbled, and even while grabbing the bars, her body began to slip to the floor.

Splinter put his sword away, and had the little healer in his arms in one, fluid movement.  With Tiger Claw back on his feet, he swept Phoenix up off of hers, turned down the hall and sprinted down it.  His mission, he reminded himself, was to not defeat anyone in battle.  It was to get in, retrieve their friends, and get out.

However, he couldn’t help saying, “Not bad.”

He felt, more then heard or saw, Tiger Claw behind him, following him through the maze of the dungeon.  Phoenix’s hands clutched at his fur, pulling at his skin slightly.  The sensation was disconcerting, like a little pinch on one’s back that isn’t easily reached.  It didn’t hurt, but sustained discomfort of it indicated a physical closeness with another person that seemed injudicious.  While her body didn’t seem any less substantial than it did in his memory, she weighed much less than he anticipated she would.  Of course, carrying turtle boys with heavy shells on their backs might have skewed his perception, he noted.  Cradling her closer to his chest as he sprang up on the wall to avoid a projectile sent his way by Tiger Claw, he heard her mutter, “I don’t like being labeled.”

“That is immediately obvious,” he replied.

“My kids,” she said, her voice which was had been strong a moment before, returned to the wispy state it had been when she’d first spoken to him.  “The Mutanimals.  We have to get them.”

“The boys are freeing the others,” Splinter told her, twisting to avoid another shuriken sent his way.  

She lifted her head, a look of horror on her face, “They won’t get out.”  Her voice was hollow, like when she was voicing enemies in the stories she told to him and her children when they lived in The Burrow.  

The sound made his heart sink.   _This is a trap,_ she had said to him only moments before.  He knew it was a trap.  Pigeon Pete’s instructions were very specific.  Hamato Yoshi was to come, alone, or The Shredder would torture and kill each and every one of  them, starting with The Phoenix, then each of her children, then The Mighty Mutanimals. There was no guile, nothing covert in the request.  It was plain, quite predictable request.  He felt anger rising in his gut, and took another deep breath to calm it.

How could he have thought that this was a straightforward plan?  It was a trap.  The trap, he had assumed, was set for him and him alone.  It was obvious.  He would come in, try to save someone, most likely the first person on The Shredder’s list.  An enemy would be lying in wait for him, of course.  He would evade his attacker, defeat him in battle, if necessary.  Ororku Saki would be waiting, just as the woman in his arms, now had waited for him to come.

But Tiger Claw had been the one to meet him in the dungeon.

He was a fool.

Splinter’s enhanced hearing picked up fighting as he headed toward the terrarium.  The change in temperature was unsettling, reminisce of his own time spent trapped there, mindless and primitive.  He let it slide from him, like a droplet of water falling from the waxy casing of a leaf, leaving him with only the present.  Tiger Claw’s presence pressed at his back, just as the presence of both The Foot Clan, his own sons, and their friends pressed at his front.

The room opened up before him as he burst through the hallway into the terrarium. The practiced silence in his mind allowed information to seemingly flow from his environment, impressing upon his senses not in words or even symbolic pictures, but as knowledge.  The woman in his arms tensed, she moved to look about the room, but then she went slack again, as if she might have fainted. But her ki was still fully present, indicting her awake.

Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo were fighting Bradford, Fishface, Rocksteady, and Beebop in a cat and mouse game.  Donatello was at the controls in the center of the room, Stockman lying unconscious on the ground at his feet.

“You call that dancin’?” Bebop was taunting Raph, each move of his torso punctuated with a laser burst that sent Raph off the ground in an attempt to avoid it.  “My grandma can dance better than that!”

“Your grandma wishes she could dance like that,” Leonardo shot back, and Splinter felt the slow burn of embarrassment for the boy.  He’d never been good at smack talking.

“Really?” his brother said to him, throwing a handful of shuriken at Fishface as the fish mutant recovered from a dodge.  “That’s all you can come up with?”

Leo jumped in front of his brother, his katana blocking a laser from Bebop.  “You didn’t come up with anything!”

The sound of glass sliding sibilated as one of the cage fronts slid down.  “Yes!  Got one!”

“One?” Raph asked, his voice cracking.  “That’s it?”

“Hey!” the purple banded turtle called.  “This stuff takes time!”

“Try not to take too long,” said Slash, emerging from the open cell.  He made a dash for Rocksteady, the rhino lowering his head and charging for the turtle.

Splinter reached out, ticking off the enemies present, for a sign of The Shredder.  He felt none, but he did feel Tiger Claw behind him.  He leapt up to the railing, then to the upper level, giving him enough distance to put Phoenix down before turning to fight the wild cat mutant.  She seemed like a lump, her body lying prostrated on the ground as she blinked slowly at him, her brows drawn together in worry.

The rat turned, dodging two lasers as he did, bringing his arm up to block a fist coming at his face.

“Why is she that important, Yoshi-san?” Tiger Claw asked.  “That you’d risk coming here to fetch her?”

The question threw him off guard, the silence in his mind shattering into a flurry of answers to the question, _Why is she so important that I’d risk coming here to fetch her?_

_She is in danger, I would help anyone in danger._  That wasn’t true, he knew, he’d left plenty of people in danger throughout his life, both before his sons decided to become superheroes and afterward.

_She helped me, it is only right to return a kindness for a kindness._  The ancient platitude, intoned in so many cultures, while true, did not ring so in his being.   _A life for a life._ There was more to it than that, despite the fact he could convince himself of its veracity.  

_The Shredder would destroy her and I could not bear that._  His chest constricted at the thought, as it had myriad times before he and the boys had come up with this escape plan.

Which didn’t seem to be going according to plan.

Splinter was too slow in responding to a strike from Tiger Claw. He twisted sidewise with the impact of the tiger’s fist hitting his shoulder, then was brought back to his starting place as he was struck in his ribcage.  He let the chatter in his brain melt away, as if he were tuning out an annoying conversation in a restaurant, the sound dissipated through his ears, and he brought his attention back to his center.  

With thoughtlessness surrounding him like a blanket, he moved only slightly to the left, avoiding another strike, and sending one of his own to the tiger’s neck.  Two blocks of retaliating punches, his forearms coming to his face, were then free to chop at Tiger Claw’s neck again, sending a gag from the tiger mutant as he was too slow to get out of the way.  A thrust to the shoulder sent Tiger Claw reeling backward, and flick of Splinter’s tail laid him flat out on the floor.  Splinter kicked him hard, pushing him off of the side of the railing to the floor below.  He hit the metal hand-railing, denting it, before falling again to the ground level, lying still on the floor below.

Turning to scoop Phoenix up again, he called, “Make haste, Donatello!”  

“I’m trying!” his son all but screeched.  

As if to quiet him, one of the cages opened again, Aries bounding out on all fours, his head down ready to ram into someone, and it looked like Fishface was his target.   “Sushi’s on the menu!” Aries cried.

Fishface abandoned his fight with Leo and Raph to face the ram.

“Nice doggie, doggie,” Mikey said, leaping from handrail to handrail to handrail, Bradford hot on his trail.  “I didn’t mean to interrupt your date with a snake!”

“I’ll do worse to you than I’ve done to that snake when I get a hold of you,” Bradford growled.

Splinter had the little healer in his arms again, leapt up on the handrail, and fell down to the control panel, landing as gently as he could.  Even doing so, Phoenix jarred in his grip, though she didn’t complain, she did let out a quick breath.  “Are you alright?” he asked her quietly.

“Yes,” she answered.

At the same time as her words came out, the fur on the back of Splinter’s neck began to rise, his whiskers reaching out of their follicles.  He turned, looking up at The Shredder, standing framed by the entrance of the chamber.

“Hurry, Donatello!”  he spat, half laying, half dropping the woman in his arms, readying himself for an attack.

The Shredder dropped down to the bottom level with the utmost grace, his cape whipping behind him, giving the impression he could fly.   _Saki was always good at theatrics,_ Splinter thought, but he pushed the words away, his mind blank once more.

“I think I can open all of the cages!” Donnie called, his gapped toothed grin threatening to split his face.

“Do it!” Leo commanded.  “We can use the other mutants as a distraction.”

Aries shook his head, fighting to get free enough of Fishface so he could yell down to Donnie.  “No!”  His voice, made specifically for the echoes of the thin air in the high mountains, bounced off the many glass-like enclosures that held a myriad of creatures.  “Don’t open all of the cages!”

Donnie pressed the button before the last of the ram’s words got out, and a loud _shhhhh_ of sinking cage fronts filled the room.  The air was filled with a cacophony of freed things, both sentient and not.  

Medusa slithered out of her confinement.

 


	145. Chapter 145

Medusa slithered out of her cage, her jaw, now distinct from her body, already open.  Black eyes, animalistic and filled with rage, looked about, and fell upon Bebop.  With a scream that sounded nothing like her, she darted toward the warthog.  Bebop stopped where he was in engaged with Raph and let out a high pitched scream before he started running in the opposite direction.

“Huh?” Raph turned around to see Medusa coming at him. He pressed himself against the wall to let her go by, “That was Medusa?  What happened to her?”

Bebop let out another scream as he scrambled for the stairs.  He didn’t make it before the boa constrictor caught up with him, wrapping her body around him and opening her mouth to display the full length of the two giant fangs on either side of it.  Bebop screamed a third time when arcs of lightning began to spark between each of her two only dentia.

“She was mutated,” Leatherhead said, now out of his confines, he headed toward Bradford and Mikey.

“Aww, ‘Duse,” Aries bahhed, stopping his charge as Rocksteady made a u-turn toward Bebop.

“I coming, comrade!” Rocksteady called.

“She’s gonna turn me into bacon!” Bebop cried. “And eat me extra crispy!”

The Shredder rolled his shoulders, his eye on Splinter.  “The raccoon was right,” he said.

“So I’ve been told,” Splinter replied.

“I will be sure to make you watch, then,” Shredder said, bringing his arms to ichimonji, “as I cut her into tiny pieces and feed her to the piranha.”

As he was finishing his words, Splinter felt the familiar engagement of Shredder’s energy with his own, signifying the start of the fight.

Splinter and Shredder leapt at each other, the world around them seeming to slow down to accommodate them.  The rat brought his hand up to Shredder’s neck, the leader of the Foot Clan blocked it.  Splinter immediately followed with another, then another, both blocked the same ease that they were given.  Shredder dropped his arm, aiming a punch at Splinter’s ribcage.  The rat used his tail to strike it away, only glancing at the gauntlet that held the Shredder’s metal blades within them.  Shredder took a step back, like dancing, and twirled with a round house kick.  Splinter ducked, brought his arm up to block the return kick, redirecting Shredder’s leg to the ground.  The two separated from each other, eyes never moving from his opponent’s.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Yoshi,” Shredder said.  “I will destroy you, and your turtles, just like I destroyed you before.”

A coal of anger began to smolder in Splinter’s breast.  Mentally, he tried to fan it out.  “You cannot destroy us,” he countered.  “Even in your destruction, you were thwarted.”  Each time, the Universe had showed its hand, and even in their darkest times, it turned out in Splinter’s favor.

“By her,” Shredder replied.  “But not this time.”

Donnie turned from the mesmerizing moves of his sensei, to see Stockman still laying to the side, out like a light, and The Phoenix lay near Splinter and Shredder in a swaying lump.  Using his bo staff as a vaulting pole, he jumped up to a higher level, joining Leo and Raph.  “I don’t see Karai,” he noted as he looked around wildly at the terrarium room filled with mutants of various kinds.  Several of the crustacean Shredders headed toward them.

“She’s no longer in here,” Rockwell swung down from the level below.  “They took her to a different room after she changed back into a human.”

“She’s human again?” Leo’s face broke out in a huge smile.  It disappeared almost immediately as a shrimp sailed in the air, thrown by a lobster mutant, toward his head.  Donnie took his bo staff and batted it like a baseball, where it went sailing across the ledge, into the fan below.

“Ouch,” Raph muttered.

“She was the last time we saw her,” Rockwell replied. 

“Where is she?” Leo demanded.  “We have to help her!”

“We have to get out of here,” Slash ran up to them.  “We can’t hold back all these mutants, and Medusa has the others distracted.”

Rocksteady and Fishface were at the huge boa constrictor, fighting to keep her occupied so she didn’t eat Bebop.  She has rehanged her jaw, though her two fangs still arched with electric blue jolts, her head darting at whatever came too close to her.  Tiger Claw crawled from the lower level, growling loudly.  The snake turned her head toward him, but did not let the warthog go.

Again, Splinter and Shredder came for each other, meeting half way as if their fight were choreographed.  Splinter twirled in the air, his tail coming down on Shredder’s shoulder like a heavy rope.  Shredder dropped to the ground in a crouch, the weight of the tail forcing him down.  He grabbed the segmented appendage with his opposite hand, pulling hard, bringing Splinter to the floor on his back with a thud.  He jumped up, a fist aimed for the rat’s muzzle, but Splinter rolled away, getting back to his feet.

“She can barely help herself,” Shredder pointed to the healer, who was trying, unsuccessfully to stand up.  “There is no way she can help you, or anyone else, again.”

“I’ll help you meet your maker!” she cried.  With a swiftness that surprised Splinter, she threw something in Shredder’s direction.  It was a lever off of the control panel, and she tossed it as one would a throwing knife. 

Shredder batted it away as if it were nothing, but in doing so, he turned his body ever so slightly.  Splinter, seeing his opening, rushed in, striking his ribcage with three quick, successive blows of his fists.  Shredder doubled over, bringing his arm up as he did, blocking a fourth strike.

Mikey bounced about the terrarium room like a jumping bean, Rahzar hot on his heels.  He wove through freed mutants, sentient and not, but the ninja dog kept gaining on him.   The orange masked turtle caught sight of Leatherhead in his periphery, and changed direction to bound toward him. 

Leatherhead held his arms out, as if to receive Mikey in a hug, despite the fact that Rahzar was about to grab him.  As soon as the turtle was in his arms, he twirled, his mighty tail flailing like a thousand pound whip.  It caught Rahzar in the gut, sending him flying across the level, so that he landed near Medusa.

That caught the snake’s attention enough, that she unwound from Bebop and darted toward the dog.  He yipped and jumped out of the way, causing Medusa to land on the control platform.

Splinter smelled her before he heard her splat, like a rope being dropped in a loop.  The hair on back, from the base of his spine to the tip of his tail stood straight up as the sound of the hiss that emanated from the young woman.  Shredder struck him in the shoulder, but he was able to block a strike to the face, before they parted enough that both of them looked at the feral mutant now in their midst. 

She’d fallen on the other side of Phoenix, so the three of them were boxed in by the railing that kept the operator of the control panel from falling into the huge cooling fan.  The little woman took a step back, stumbling, as she brought her hands to her mouth.  “Oh Curly Que,” she moaned, her voice filled love.  “My poor baby.”  Then she turned to Shredder and Splinter, her dark green eyes blazing on the rat.  “You!” she screeched, pointing at him with a thin finger.  “You stole my daughter from me!  Because of you, she’s a serpent!  My beautiful Karai!”

“What?” Splinter asked, confusion clouding his features. 

“Hhn?” Shredder asked at the same.  Then, with a smile in his voice, he said, “You see?  She isn’t helping anyone.”

Dreadful understanding stroked Splinter’s brow and his heart sank, landing the coals of burning rage that he’d tried to suffocate.

Phoenix flew at him, screaming like a banshee, but in her physical state, she didn’t get far.

Medusa, on the other hand, traversed the landing in one jump, landing just behind her mother.  Both Splinter and Shredder turned to avoid her, but the snake looped, scooping all three of them in her coils, before she began to squeeze.

Phoenix was still screaming, wordless and crazed.  It didn’t seem to be a scream of pain, or a scream of anguish, but just her voice using itself because it could.  Splinter felt his breath slowly being clasped out of him, his arms trapped against his sides, as were Shredder’s beside him.  Shredder strained his head, trying to free his arms, when he was unable to do so, Splinter heard the scrape of metal on metal as he gauntlet blades slid out.

Phoenix’s scream became one that was plainly from physical agony.  She threw her head back, her long strawberry blond hair falling behind her, the tendons in her neck so clear that the skin that covered them barely hid them from sight.

Medusa, too, screamed, only the sound was so high pitched, Splinter wasn’t sure the humans trapped with him heard it.  He pressed his ears to his head, his eyes squinting of their own accord, as the snake uncoiled, releasing them.

“Sensei,” Leo yelled.  “We have to go now!”

Splinter looked up at him.   The Mutanimals, Arocs, Aries, and the rest of his sons had all gathered in a group, preparing to battle a large crowd of crustacean Shredder mutants that approached them.  When her still screaming, he scooped the little healer who lay in a heap on the floor, and leapt up from the landing toward the exit.

With only Shredder left, Medusa finally stopped her wail, and turned her black eyes on him.  Opening her mouth, electricity arced between her teeth.  Shredder steadied his feet to defend himself as she struck.

The turtles and their allies made it to the exit unmolested, Medusa continuing her unconscious distraction as Shredder’s minions all clamored down to the control panel to try to help him.  Once outside, they took the roof tops, leaping and jumping until they were far enough away that they felt they could rest.

Holding Phoenix to his chest, he felt liquid seep through his fur on his arm.  Looking down, in the dim light of the night, he could see she was bleeding.

“We shouldn’t have left her,” Aries said, collapsing on the rooftop.  “We should have taken her, too.”

“Medusa saved our lives,” Leatherhead said.  “We couldn’t have held everyone back without her.”

“We’ll get her back,” Michelangelo said softly, putting a hand on the ram’s shoulder.  “We’ll figure out how to fix her, and help you get her back.”

Splinter’s breast filled with pride at his youngest son.  A man who had been an enemy only a week or two before, now was not only an ally, but friend enough that Michelangelo would promise something so important.  And he knew that his son meant every word of it, even if he had no idea at the moment how to implement them.

“Who’s bleeding so heavily?” Arcos asked, his muzzle in the air, sniffing.

Splinter looked down and realized the smell was coming from him.  Only he wasn’t the one bleeding. 

“Shredder must have speared her,” Leo said, coming toward his sensei.

Donnie approached with an outstretched hand, placing it on Phoenix’s forehead.  “She’s so cold, Sensei.”

“We need to keep moving,” Slash interrupted.   “They’ll come after us soon.  We need to split up, regroup.”

“We need to get her back to the lair,” Donnie said.  “She shouldn’t be this cold, Sensei.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere,” Aries said, standing up.  “She’s coming home with us.”

“So she can what?” Leo asked, standing next to Splinter.  “Bleed to death?”

“She isn’t bleeding to death,” Arcos replied, his voice low.

“I don’t think she can bleed to death,” Aries added.

“You wanna test that out?” Raph asked, stretch his fingers in front of him. 

“She’s safe with them,” Leatherhead said.  “They will take excellent care of her.”

“They don’t need to take good care of her!” Aries’ voice was high, his eyes wide.  He took a step toward Splinter.

All four turtles stood in front of him, and almost reflexively, he held the bleeding human woman closer to his chest.

“You come with us,” Mikey said, the only one not looking as if he was about to immediately draw his weapon.  “We’re not kidnapping her.”

“You’re inviting them home with us?” Raph turned to the orange-masked turtle in disbelief.  “Seriously?”

“We need to move,” Leo ordered, looking to Slash, who nodded.

Mikey broke ranks, flying into Leatherhead’s arms.  The huge mutant lowered his head to fully embrace the turtle before letting him go, and following the rest of the Mutanimals into the night.

“Come,” Splinter said, turning toward the direction of the Lair.  “We’ll heal her wounds,” he said.  “And we will heal yours, too.”

 

 Authors Note: Don't forget, the contest is still on.  Make sure to comment or kudos, to get your name put in a drawing for a hard copy of season 1 of The Other Side of the City.


	146. Chapter 146

“What’s the matter?” Aries snapped at Leo as he finished yanking off his mother’s pants.  “You’ve never seen a woman’s legs before?”

The young turtle blushed a deep red, looking up from the prostrate form of The Phoenix on the used hospital table that had been set up in Donnie’s lab.  He hadn’t thought they’d need it that much, when they’d dug it out of the dumpster at Donnie’s insistence.  “If something happens to April,” he had said, “or Casey, we need equipment.”  It was left unspoken that something might happen to he or his brothers.  But he’d never thought he would see this person on it.

“I’ve seen a woman’s legs before,” he muttered, looking away from the table altogether.  He’d seen women’s legs in shorts and skirts.  He’d seen photos of women’s legs in bathing suits and underwear.  But what was disconcerting about the pair of legs on the table was that they were covered in blood and attached to an unconscious middle aged woman who had been their enemy only a short time before.

“Is she still bleeding?” Arcos asked, the fingers on his hand-like paw gingerly touching his mother’s thigh.

“I do not believe so,” Splinter replied, bending down to examine Phoenix’s hip. 

Leo had noticed that he had not touched her again once he’d set her down on the table.  His hands, however, were not in their normal position behind his back, but rather in front of him, hovering over her, as if he wanted to touch her, but was afraid to do so.  If Leo was not as good as he was at reading subtext in a story, he would not have been surprised.  Her two enormous sons loomed over her threateningly, neither of them having any wounds that needed healing.  But the blue masked turtle suspected that they were not the reason his Sensei was not allowing his paws to touch the woman on the table.

When Pigeon Pete had flapped into their lair, loud and calamitous as normal, none of them had been alarmed.  Or, alarmed more than normal.  Until he began talking, then the alarm bells began blaring.

The bird mutant turned to Master Splinter, squawking, “Shredder says you are to come to his lair or he’s going to kill The Phoenix.”

“Shredder has a phoenix?” Mikey asked.  He turned to Donnie accusingly.  “You told me they were made up!”

“Shredder doesn’t have a phoenix,” Donnie whined.

Master Splinter’s eyes had not left Pete as he spoke.  His ears laid back slightly, as they did when he was agitated.

“What are you talking about?” Raph asked.

“Shredder captured Medusa, and we all went into rescue her, but it was an ambush, and everyone is captured—“ Pete babbled.

“Wait a minute,” Raph interrupted.  “You went in to save Medusa?  Big snake Medusa?”

Pete blinked.  “Yeah.”

“Tried to eat me, Medusa?” Raph asked.

“She tried to eat you?” Pete’s voice rose in pitch.  “She only eats bad guys.”

“She’s one of the bad guys!” Raph shouted.

“No,” Master Splinter said quietly.  “She is not.”

“Pete,” Leo asked.  “Who is The Phoenix?”

The pigeon mutant tilted his head as he looked at Leo, as if he’d suddenly grown two more eyes and tentacles coming out of his earholes.  “She’s…she’s The Phoenix.  She helps mutants in need!”  He squawked, raising one hand in the air as if saluting something.  “She’s like a doctor,” he explained.  “She’s yay big,” he held his hand up to indicate her height, “and she has long red blonde hair, but it was way more red years ago in her photos, and green eyes, and these two big, round scars on her face, and when she’s mad at you, she looks like this.”  Leo could notice no discernable difference in how the pigeon normally looked and how he was looking at that moment.

Mikey gasped.  “Disembodied Arm Mom!”

“She is not a pair of disembodied arms!” Donnie yelled.

“Medusa’s mother is a doctor?” Raph asked.

“You don’t know The Phoenix?” Pete asked, his voice sounded genuinely confused.

“You said Casey was lying!” Mikey pointed at Raph dramatically.

“Casey was lying?” Splinter asked, his white brows drawing together.

“No, he wasn’t lying,” Mikey said.  “Raph thought he was, when he said Medusa’s mom sewed up his head.”

“Donnie took the stitches out,” Leo told his father.

“And you were going to tell me this, when?” Splinter asked sternly.

The four turtles fell silent.

“Never?” Mikey asked quietly.

“Sensei,” Donnie asked gently.  “Why would Shredder kidnap Medusa’s mother to get you to come to his lair?”

Master Splinter had not answered right away, his eyes taking a long time to leave Pigeon Pete to look toward his tallest son.  “During the Kraang Invasion,” he had begun slowly, “The Phoenix and her children took me in and healed me from my battle wounds.”  The words were said curtly, as if they hurt to speak.

Leo put his hand on Raph’s arm.  It looked as if his brother’s green eyes were going to bulge out of his head.  “You _stayed_ with them during the Invasion?” Raph’s voice was indignant, and a good octave higher than normal.  “When were you were going to tell _us_ this?”

“Never?” Mikey repeated.

“But I thought you were out of your mind?” Leo asked, trying to pull Raph behind him. 

“Not for the entire time,” Splinter’s explained, his shoulders sagging.  Then Sensei had explained how she had found him in the sewer after he had somehow made it to a dry landing spot, mostly likely saved his life, and nursed him back to relative health.

“Then how did you go crazy?” Mikey asked.  “Because, you were definitely not in relative health when we found you.”

Hearing Mikey say, ‘relative health’ had made Leo smile.

“She has a healing power,” Splinter explained.  Pigeon Pete nodded vigorously.  “She can access one’s body and one’s mind.  One day when she tried…” his voice trailed off.

“Something went wrong?” Leo prompted.

Splinter nodded, his head barely moving, and Leo suspected that there was a great deal more to his father’s explanation than what the rat had spoken out loud.

Over the convening weeks, as they etched out battle plan, all of them grew testy.  Raph went so far as to go to Shredder’s Lair on his own to break out his friend, Slash, only to be beaten back before he even got there by a slew of Foot soldiers.  

“You were just going to leave everyone else in there?” April asked him scathingly.

“No,” he answered, “Just Medusa.”

Jack Kurtzman came to the Lair with Pigeon Pete often, bringing information he had on the layout of the area, the numbers of the members of the Foot Clan, and an entire fat file folder titled, “Children of the Phoenix.”  In it were separate folders, Arcos, Aries, Medusa, Phoebe LaFarrier.

The folders on the three mutants were typical of Kurtzman’s files on the mutants in the city.  There were no photos of or articles of them when they were younger, save one.  A homeless man claimed to a journalist that a witch queen had four animal spirits who helped her heal people, if you were good to her.  If you weren’t, the animal spirits tore you apart.  The homeless man was quite sure that the spirits stood for the four directions, and were a cat, bear, snake, and goat.

“Sounds like a Satanist,” Casey chuckled.

“I can see someone mistaking Aries for a goat,” Donatello nodded.

“He’s not a goat?” Casey asked, laughing.

“He’s a sheep,” Mikey said seriously, holding up his file.

“I guess they took their pet cat with them when they went out,” Casey noted.  “You know, those alley cats have been known to eat people.”

“Medusa probably ate _it,”_ Raph muttered.

“Get over it, Raph,” Casey clasped his shoulders.  “We all have bad days.  Little Mama ain’t that bad.”

Unlike her children’s folders, which did not start to contain information until four years prior, about two years before Leo and his brothers first went to the surface, their mother’s folder was quite fat.  But almost all of the information was between fifty and twenty years old.

On the very top of the stack was a death certificate, Phoebe Marie Lafarrier, nee Trice had died almost twenty years before.

“What’s that mean?” Mikey had asked.

“It means her maiden name was Trice,” Donnie explained.  “She married a man whose last name was Lafarrier.”

“But she’s not dead,” Casey noted.

“That’s not what the authorities say,” April held up a stack of newspaper articles. 

There was a missing person report, announcing that Phoebe Lafarrier had disappeared in New York City, her body never found.  _Husband of murdered gymnast returns to native Haiti, was he the killer?_ was the headline on another.

Other articles, much older, were farther down the stack.  Many were of a scandal.  Apparently she’d been quite the gymnast as a youngster, there was even an article of her when she was very young with a cousin, staged with her grandmother.  _Who will Grandmother Trice root for?  Her American granddaughter or her Canadian grandson?  Come to the World Championships and find out._   There had been a family break when she’d gotten married.

Mikey held up the wedding photo.  It showed a young Phoenix, who’s hair was indeed a much darker red, just as Pigeon Pete had said, standing next to a tall black man with long dreadlocks.  Her white dress stood out starkly against his black tuxedo, and they both smiled happily at each other, as if unaware of the camera.  “He looks like an OK guy,” Mikey said.

“I don’t think that’s why her family disowned her, Mikey,” April said sadly.

“Does it say in the papers why?” Raph asked.

Casey and April looked at each other, both of them glancing behind them at Master Splinter and Jack Kurtzman.  When neither of the adults answered, April picked up another article.  “Look, she was a poet.”

Then, twenty years previous, the information on her stopped, until she began to roam the streets with her kids.  There were no clear photos of her, she was either in the shadows, or obscured by objects or people in her way.  Kurtzman’s notes on her were as detailed as they were on all of his subjects.

Splinter reached out for a page.  “She is a product of Kraang experimentation?” he asked Kurtzman.

The older man nodded.  “Much like April O’Neil.”  He smiled at the girl.  “She’s one of the failed experiments.”

“It would make sense,” Donnie said, “that your family weren’t the only ones who were genetically manipulated.”

“There were a total of eleven that I’ve been able to find,” Kurtzman said.  He picked up a stack of his notes, obviously medical papers, and handed them to Donatello.  “She’s a pretentious you-know-what,” he pointed to her medical information as if it were her, “but she’s a good person.”  He looked guiltily at Leo.  “If I had known that you weren’t allies yourself, I would have said something.”

Leo found out in that conversation, that The Phoenix, Phoebe Lafarrier had been instrumental in obtaining the information on the Kraang during the invasion, the same information that he and his brothers had used to take them down.  “If it wasn’t for her,” he said, “I’m not sure we’d have been able to get in to get it.”

With each scrap of information that was dropped, read, discovered, Master Splinter had fallen deeper and deeper into silence.  When Pete and Kurtzman had left, close to the day of their rescue, Leo had come to visit his Master in the dojo.

The rat was in his customary meditation pose, but Leo was astute enough to know that his father was not in trance at the moment, merely going through the motions.  “Sensei,” he repeated Donnie’s question.  “Why would Shredder kidnap Phoenix if he wanted you to come to his lair.”

Splinter’s eyebrows drew up, meeting in an inverted ‘v’, giving him a look as if he was in pain, and Leo had not understood why his father didn’t answer.

But seeing him now, hovering about her without touching, without making any move to help her, he thought he understood.

It appeared that The Phoenix had been speared through her hip by The Shredder’s claw.  Her sons’ stripped her of her pants and lifted her shirt to just below her breast line, neither of them showing any inclination that they were embarrassed by seeing their mother’s almost naked body.  Master Splinter’s hands, however, were open above her body, as if searching for something to lay upon.

He understood, because in his meditations after many a confrontation with a certain Foot Clan soldier, he asked the question, over and over, “Why didn’t I touch her?”  He felt the exact same way whenever he saw Karai.

  **A/N: The contest is still on, for six more chapters.  Leave a kudos or comment, and get entered to win a paper copy of The Other Side of the City!**

 


	147. Chapter 147

“You know, Saki,” Yoshi said, his arms across his 12 year old chest, “if you’d only waited, we would have gotten to eat some.”

She scowled.  She knew she was scowling, even though her name was not Saki, and she couldn’t feel her mouth in a downward line.  But she knew that her bottom lip stuck out slightly, and annoyance burned at her chest.  “If you had been more quiet, Yoshi,” she said to her brother, “then we wouldn’t have gotten caught.”

Yoshi shrugged.  “We can get some cookies at the café tomorrow anyway,” he said. 

“You just want to go to the café because of that girl,” she replied, her voice deeper than she remembered it being.

“So do you,” Yoshi said, running his hands though her hair and then running ahead of her.

She smiled broadly, because it was true, and ran after him.

Crying out in pain, the memory vanished, and all that was left was her insides twisting in a way she couldn’t ever remember them doing before. 

“It’s only water, Mama,” she heard Aries say.

She struggled to open her eyes, the light was too bright for her, and the pain in her abdomen threatened to cut her half.  She realized she’d been dipped in a tub of some sort, and was being lifted out of it, someone else was scrubbing her torso and legs.

“Be careful,” Aries said.

_I am being careful, you dumb sheep,_ she heard a female voice, one that was new, that she hadn’t heard before say in her head.  “I’m being as gentle as I can,” the same voice replied out loud.  “There’s blood all over the place.” 

“We need to empty the tub and wash her again,” Arcos’ grizzly voice hit her ears.

“Teddy Bear,” she managed to get out, opening her eyes again.  Tears welled in them from the bright light, from the pain in her body, and then from the terrible look in her son’s brown eyes.

_She calls him Teddy Bear?_ The girl’s voice said in her head again.  _Like a real mother._

“I am a real mother,” she said.

“I know you are, Mama,” Arcos replied.  She felt herself lifted out of the tub, and heard the water being to drain from it.  “You’ve been hurt on your insides,” the bear mutant explained.  “But we can’t tell where, because we don’t have the equipment.”

“You have to tell us where you’re hurt,” Aries said.

The sound of running water filled her ears with a roar, and her eyes were tired, too tired to keep them open.  Her insides hurt, but where?  “All of them,” she uttered.  She concentrated on the places it hurt the most, and the tingling that usually came through her palms accumulated in her gut.

_She can’t fall asleep,_ the girl’s voice said in her head.  “She’s going to fall unconscious again!” it yelled to her outside ears.

“Try to keep her awake!” said another voice, one she recognized, but it was muffled, as if speaking through a wall.  “If she falls asleep, she might not wake back up again!”

_That would be nice,_ Phoenix thought.  _To go to sleep forever.  Then, I wake up, I won’t be tired any longer._

“Don’t think that’s gonna happen, Donnie!  What do we do?”  The girl sounded panicked.  _How do I keep her awake?  These two lugs can’t help.  They’re too upset._

“Shake her,” said Arcos.

She immediately felt her body being jarred about.  _Stop it!!_ The girl’s voice in her head screamed.  Phoenix tried to control her arms and legs, but the force from being shook around kept her from doing anything.  They were so heavy, so was her head, and each movement sent a stab of agony through her insides.

“What are you doing?!” the girl cried.  “Stop!”

“Sensei!” another muffled voice cried.  Phoenix recognized it, from a long time ago, along with the scent of fennel.  _Was that Michelangelo?_ “Do something!”

She was in the water again and she gasped from the cold.  _That’s right, stay awake,_ the girl’s voice in her head said.

_No,_ she answered it.  _I just want to sleep._

It gave no reply.

“Don’t we need a towel?” the voice that had been identified as Donnie asked.

“A towel?” Aries said incredulously.  “She’s dying, and you want a towel?”

“She’s not wearing anything!”

“At least she’s not bleeding to death,” she heard a third voice say.

“Shut up, Raph!”  It was Michelangelo again.

_I don’t know what to do,_ the girl’s voice said.

_Just let me sleep,_ she told it.  But it didn’t answer this time, either.

“Here,” Splinter’s deep voice broke through the haze, and she was wrapped in something warm and fuzzy.  “Put her down on the table.”

She managed to pry her eyes open again, this time the light was not quite so bright.  “Splinter,” she managed to get out.

“Yes,” he said, coming into her range of vision.  She smelled musk and grapes, mixed with herbs of some kind, his smell.

Her eyes searched his face, except for the concerned expression on it, he seemed fine.  Just fine.  She smiled, or she thought she did, anyway.  “They told me you had gone crazy, and were wandering the sewer.”  She sounded very far away to herself.

“I was,” he said quietly.  “But now, I am not.”

“Good,” she replied.  “I’m tired.”

“You must stay awake,” Splinter said sternly.  But, his voice was already drifting away.  He began to chant syllables she didn’t understand, much like gibberish, and then, blessed blackness overtook her.

###

Trying to deal with The Phoenix’s wounds was the biggest fiasco Donnie had witnessed since they were young, when Raph had gotten in a fight with a sewer tunnel filled with glass shards and lost.  They’d run to fetch their father, the other three of them all flutter with worry.  Only now, there were seven people all aflutter, and Sensei wasn’t doing much to help.

“We need to clean her wounds,” Splinter said, as Ramshead grabbed her underarms and Arcos pulled her pants off.

Leo had a look of horror on his face, so that the ram snapped at him. 

“She’s bleeding to death,” Mikey wailed.

“She’s not bleeding to death,” Grizzly replied, though his face didn’t look like he was convinced.

“Where’s the shower?” Aries asked.  “We can rinse her off.”

“Sensei,” Donnie said, “She might have internal organs that are perforated.”   He glanced at the bloody set of legs, her gaze avoiding the actual puncture sites.  “I don’t know what we can do for her if they are.  And I don’t have ability to find out.”

“We don’t have a shower,” Leo was saying.  “We only have a tub.”

“Well then fill the tub!” Grizzly demanded.  Ramshead lifted the little woman off the table.  She hung limply, like a rag doll. 

At the command, Mikey ran off to fill the tub with warm water.  When Ramshead and Grizzly came into the bathroom, followed by Splinter and the other three boys, they began to strip The Phoenix down.  The bear gave a tug on her panties, so they ripped as he was taking them off, as Ramshead proceeded to lift up her shirt.

All of them had quickly run out of the bathroom, save for Raph, who stood staring with a look of horror on his face.  Splinter grabbed him by the shoulder and bodily helped him out of the bathroom.

“Yo!” called Ramshead.  “Some help here!”

“But she’s not wearing anything!” Leo cried through the open door.  “We can’t come in.”

“It is not appropriate,” Splinter replied at the same time.

Ramshead appeared in the hallway, his head down as if he were going to start at someone.  His golden eyes, the pupils merely slits.  “She cleaned filth off of you,” he baaed.  “After she’d fallen off a five story building, and we had no running water!”  He squinted, his nostrils flaring.  “And you helping isn’t appropriate?”

“I’m calling April,” Donnie said quickly.

“Aries!” Grizzly yelled, and the ram disappeared back in the bathroom, not closing the door behind him.

Donatello had never considered, in his set up of an emergency first aid station, that he’d ever have to strip someone of their clothes.  Well, there was always the chance he’d have to strip Casey, he was an idiot, after all.  And the _dream_ he’d get to strip April, but he’d never really thought they’d have to remove anyone’s clothes.

And those two in the bathroom did it with no reservations whatsoever.  And it was their _mother!_   He did not know much about human families, but he was pretty sure that sons did not take their mother’s clothes off.

“April, we need your help!  We have a woman here, and her clothes are all bloody, and they’re washing her in the tub.”

“And none of us can use the bathroom!” Mikey yelled.

“What?”  April asked.  “Nevermind, I’ll be right over.”

“Bring clothes!” Leo called into Donnie’s phone.

April was over in record time.  As she approached them, she gasped, her eyes going wide.

“They’re in there,” Donnie pointed to the bathroom door.  None of them had yet moved.  They’d heard the tub drain and fill up again twice already, along with a great deal of splashing.

“I--,” April shook her head, as if coming to her senses.  “Who is in there?”

“The Phoenix,” Leo explained.  “She’s been hurt.”

April disappeared into the bathroom.  “She’s awake!”

“Don’t let her fall unconscious again,” Donnie yelled, edging toward the bathroom door.  “She’s lost a lot of blood.  I think.”

There was talking, then April yelled, “She’s going to fall unconscious again!”

“Try to keep her awake!” Donnie answered. “If she falls asleep, she might not wake back up again!”

“Don’t think that’s gonna happen, Donnie!  What do we do?”  Then April practically screamed.  “Stop!”

“Sensei!” Mikey looked like he was bout the faint.  “Do something!”

Before his younger brother finished his plea, they all ran back into the bathroom.

Ramshead was lowering her back into the water, so that all he could see was her shoulders and wet hair.  On the shoulder facing them was a large, ugly scar, running from the back of her neck to the top of her chest.  It was still dark pink, indicating it happened relatively recently.

Splinter gasped, his ears laid back, and took a step backward.

The ram began to lift her out of the tub again, the water a pale pink. 

“Uh, don’t we need a towel?” Donnie squeaked.

“A towel?” Ramshead said incredulously.  “She’s dying, and you want a towel?”

“She’s not wearing anything!” Leo exploded.

“At least she’s not bleeding to death.” When Donnie looked to Raph, he was rolling his eyes.

“Shut up, Raph!”  Michelangelo said plaintively.

April looked up at Donnie, her face filled with panic.  She ran over to him, and he put his arm out to her as she buried her head in his plastron.  Despite the circumstances, he got all warm and fuzzy inside.  It was getting rarer and rarer that she came to him when she was upset.  Casey seemed to be taking up that role, and it never stopped irking him.  But when she was like this… 

 “Here,” Splinter’s deep voice broke through his haze.  He held out a large towel to Grizzly.  The bear wrapped it around his mother as they pulled her out of the tub, so that none of them got a good look at any particular part of her body.  Ramshead carried her out of the bathroom. “Put her down on the table,” his father instructed.

Once down on it, they all crowded in, looking at her.  Her eyes slowly opened, and she said.  “Splinter?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice tight.  Donnie noticed his eyes kept drifting from her face to the scar on her shoulder.  His white eyebrows were raised in concern.

Her eyes searched his face, and she even smiled a little. “They told me you had gone crazy, and were wandering the sewer.” 

“I was,” Splinter said quietly.  “But now, I am not.”

“Good,” she replied.  “I’m tired.”

“You must stay awake,” his Sensei said as if he were commanding one of his children.  But, she did not obey him.  She closed her eyes with a deep breath.  For a moment, Donnie did not think she’d take in another, but she did, shallow and slight.  But she still breathed.

Master Splinter closed his eyes, laced his fingers together, and began to chant, his hands hovered over the Phoenix’s body.

Grizzly growled, and Ramshead asked, “What are you doing?”

“He’s performing The Healing Hands,” Leo explained, and Donnie was surprised at how calm his leader’s voice was.  “It will heal her.”

Ramshead shook his head, a look of anger on his face.  Grizzly reached over and laid his paw on Master Splinter’s fingers.  “The wounds are closed,” he said.  “She’s already healed.”


	148. Chapter 148

Splinter resisted the urge to go to the dojo, the voices of his sons and those of the little healer on the edge of arguing.  He wanted to retreat, let it be their decision now, to hash out as they would, about what The Phoenix’s immediate fate would be.   He wanted to feel that he had no part in it, that his bit in the play was now over.  He’d rescued her, prevented her death at his inaction, and his sons had freed everyone else.  It was a job well done, the only casualty was made before they had even arrived, and the casualty that now was being argued over was in no real danger.

But that was not how he felt.

“I need to keep her here to make sure she’s alright,” Donnie insisted.  “If she has internal damage—“

“She doesn’t have internal damage,” Aries huffed.  “She heals stuff.  That includes herself!”

“Just because she healed the outside doesn’t mean her insides are alright,” Leo tried to explain.

“Do you think we don’t know how a body works?” Arcos growled, laying a paw on his mother’s prostrate arm as if he was going to pluck her from the makeshift hospital bed. 

“We’ll take good care of her,“ April said.  “We have the equipment here.”

Mikey put his hand out on Phoenix’s other arm, as if to initiate a tug of war, but the look on his face was compassionate.  “Donnie’s the best,” he said. 

“No,” Aries replied.  “ _She’s_ the best.”

Splinter felt like a failure.  All of their careful planning, their waiting, the tension building in their bodies and home, it was all for nothing.  Medusa appeared to be mindless, still at Shredder’s lair.  And her mother was injured, perhaps dying, in front of them.

“We don’t care if she dies,” Raph said, waving his hand dismissively.  “Go ahead and take her.”

“Enough!” Splinter’s voice rang out through the arguing.

The room became silent.

He did care.  He did care if she died, if she lived, if she stayed here or if she was taken away.  He cared more than he wanted to, more than he knew was right.  He shouldn’t care.  These were only people, met by chance, fought with by chance, rescued by chance.

But he knew better.  _Nothing in this life is by chance._

“She stays here,” his voice was decisive.  “You may stay here also, or go back home.  The choice is yours.”

Both boys looked at him as if they were going to jump over the table their mother was lain on and throttle him.  But neither one of them did.

“This is bullshit,” Aries muttered.

“Watch your language in my home,” Splinter warned.

“Bullshit!” Aries yelled, the ‘u’ coming out with a bahhh sound.  He then twirled around and rammed his closed fist into the concrete wall.

The wall won the fight, being none the worse for the wear.

Aries however, waved his hand and hissed in pain.

“Serves ya right,” Raph muttered.

The ram turned to him, his nostrils flaring.

“D,” Mikey’s voice broke through the tension, “She’s real cold.”

“Dunking her cold water probably didn’t help her any,” the purple banded turtle groused, glancing up at Aries and Arcos.

“She needs clothes,” Leo said emphatically, “April, did you bring clothes.”

She looked at him, her ranga brows drawing together.  “Uh, Leo, my clothes aren’t going to fit her.”  She looked down at the prostrate body on the table.  “You didn’t say she was so skinny. Casey’s sister’s clothes might fit her, but they’ll probably be too short.” 

“She has clothes!” Arcos growled.

“But they’re torn and covered in blood!” Mikey exclaimed.

“At home!” the bear’s voice rose.  “She has more than one set of clothes, you moron.”

“Don’t call him a moron,” Raph stepped forward, his hand on April’s shoulder as he tried to push her out of the way.

“Everyone needs to calm down!” Leo cried.

April put her hand to temple and shook her head with a frustrated moan.

Everyone turned to her.  “What is the matter, April?” Splinter asked.

“Sensei,” she said slowly.  “Whenever I put my attention on her,” April motioned to the woman on the makeshift bed, “I feel like I’m being pelted by a thousand little pebbles.”  She shook her head again.  “No, that’s not right.  It’s like rain…it’s all water, but each drop is by itself.  Does that make sense?”

Splinter raised an eyebrow, but it was Leo that answered.  “No.”

“We have to get her warmed up,” Donnie said.  “There’s no telling what they did to her in there.”

“They put her in the cage with Karai,” Aries said seriously. 

“Was she bitten?” Leo asked.

“I don’t know,” Aries replied, agitated.  “We could only see near the glass.  If they were deeper in, they were blocked from view.”

“I think she was,” Arcos replied, his voice a little calmer.  “There were a lot of times when she was dragged out.”

“That might be part of why she’s so cold,” Donnie explained.  “If she’s fighting off the venom, that might be a side effect.”

Arcos shook his head, his shoulders sagging.  “If she was,” he said, “she wouldn’t have been for a while.  Once Karai was a human again, they stopped taking Mama in there.”

“Miwa is human again?” Splinter looked, his ears facing forward, eyes wide.

Arcos growled, his softening mood gone.  “If that’s Karai, they dragged her out a human being,” he said.  “And they dragged my mother out half of one!”

“She needs another blanket,” Donnie said quietly to Mikey.

“She needs clothes,” Leo said.

“What is it with you and clothes?” Aries asked with a scowl.  “It’s not like you’re wearing any!”

“Go get her some of her own things,” Splinter said, before another argument could start.  While they were right about her needing something to wear, their unreasonableness was starting to grate on him.  The scar on Phoenix’s shoulder was blatant to him, it’s dark pink newness taunting the memory he had of becoming feral, a beast, and simply destroying whatever he could get his hands on.  He wanted both boys gone, they were causing a distraction.  Nothing was getting done with them here.    “It appears she will be staying here for a while.”

“Ah, man!” Raph rolled his eyes.

However, the declaration seemed to bring a huge relief to Donnie.  “Mikey, can you get her another blanket?  I’ll make a heating pad from something.”

“Okie dokie, D,” Mikey beamed and ran off.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Aries said.  He turned to the bear.  “You go get her clothes.”

“What makes you think I’m leaving?” he answered.

“Fine!” April stepped forward.  “I’ll get her clothes!”  She put her hands on her hips, and then bit her lip.  “Uh, where do you guys live?”

Phoenix’s two boys looked at each other, then back at April.

Mikey reappeared with another blanket, thin and worn, just like all the blankets they had, and laid on it on her.  “There we go,” he said, tucking it in around her shoulders, cover up the scar that seemed to glare at Splinter.  “Nice and cozy.”

Donnie appeared only a moment later, putting a clay disk that held the overflowing water from a houseplant at her feet.  Lifting the blanket, without looking underneath, Splinter noted, he slid it inside.  “Her feet are freezing.”  He gazed at her face.  “Is she always that pale?”

Aries and Arcos turned to look at her face.  Both of them grimaced, and in unison said, “No.”

Splinter berated himself for not noticing it sooner.  She was, indeed, very pale.  She had always been pale, the veins and arteries on the underside of her arms had shown plainly, he remembered from his time in The Burrow.  But now, her skin had little color in it at all, like it had all been sucked out of her by the bathwater the boys had dunked her in.

 Arcos put his hand on Aries shoulder and drew him in close.  “Why don’t you go to get her clothes with her?”  He jerked his head in April’s direction.

“No,” Aries whispered back.  “You go.  If something happens, I can take out more people, faster.”

“You’re not taking Splinter out,” Arcos answered.  “Or don’t you remember The Burrow.”  There was a pause when Aries did not answer.  “I can hold more people off, and grab her and run.”

The ram looked down at his mother, then up at April.  “C’mon,” he grumbled, turning to go.

“I’ll come, too,” Mikey said, bouncing behind her.  “You guys can’t carry everything by yourselves.”

“I can carry a set of clothes,” Aries bleated.  “That’s all we’re bringing.”

“Nah,” Mikey said, as their voices drifted down the sewer.  “She needs her toothbrush, and hairbrush, and nightgown, and clean underwear.  April, you had, like, these little strips you put in your underwear—“

“Mikey, shut up!”  The girl’s voice echoed through the tunnel before they were gone.

Splinter looked down at the woman again, her pale face showing her unconscious, but not at all at peace.  Her brows were slightly drawn up, as if in pain, and he had the desperate urge to stroke her forehead to try and smooth way the lines.  But he didn’t dare.  He wasn’t sure what he would do if he touched her.  If he would turn angry at what trouble she was causing, or if he would melt with the memory of her arms around him, his ears to her beating heart, and her tears falling on his head, with her muttering, “I am so sorry.”  He shook his head to dispel the memory, threatening to break his calm.

“Sensei,” Donnie’s voice broke through his reverie.  “I’d like to take a blood sample.  If she’s this pale, and it isn’t from the venom, it may be she lost more blood than we thought.  Plus, if she’s half Kraang…” he ended in a whisper.

Splinter nodded.  Looking up at Arcos, he raised his eyebrows.  “Will you allow my son to care for your mother?”

Arcos’ lips undulated, like he was fighting baring his teeth.  His dark brown eyes shifted from the rat to the turtle. 

“We want to help you,” Leo took another step toward the bed.  “Let us help her.”

The bear took a slow breath in, his eyes drifting to Splinter once again.  “Alright,” he said slowly.

“Let me try to heal her,” Splinter said.

“She doesn’t need—“

“It won’t hurt,” Leo interrupted. 

Again, the bear inhaled, his face seeming to twist in indecision.  “By this point, she’d already done twice as much for you,” his grizzly voice was tight.

Splinter let the angry retort on the tip of his tongue slide from his mind, as he twined his fingers together and began to chant.


	149. Chapter 149

With Phoenix’s more volatile son away, Splinter turned to Arcos.   His question tickled at the tip of his tongue, eager to escape.  Yet, at the same time, the desire to keep his thoughts to himself, to keep some of his experience of The Burrow his, grabbed the question, holding it in.  Finally, he managed to say,  “I am wondering how Shredder knew to kidnap your mother to get my attention.”

Arcos’ dark brown eyes looked sad, his brows drawing together.  “Sparks told him.”

Splinter let out a small noise of annoyance.  “From the Inlet?” he asked.

Arcos nodded.  “I guess he remembered when you stayed with Mama when she patched all those people up.”  The bear’s eyes turned toward Donnie, as he inserted a needle into his mother’s arm.  The blood began to spurt into the vial he held.  “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

Donnie glanced up at him, but didn’t answer.

“Ah,” Arcos nodded.  “Ask me no questions, I will tell you no lies,” he sang.

“Good advice,” Raph snarked, crossing his arms.

The guilt that tried to build in Splinter’s chest, just behind his clavicle, was pushed aside with a thought.  Too much of his life was built on second hand, third hand, fourth hand items, that the few that his children may have obtained because others ‘dropped’ them could not be considered a crime, or else the crimes of his life would come crashing down on him.  The medical supplies Donnie had diligently, over dozens of trips, retrieved from the fallen TCRI building were his.  He could not consider them ill-gotten gains, lest everything around them became so.

“So Sparks is with the Foot Clan now,” Splinter said gravely.

“Along with a bunch of the other Inleters,” Arcos explained.  “Some of them didn’t go, I know Balboa and some other left.”

The rat felt a surge of jealousy at the mention of the lizard’s name.  That, too, he let drift from him. 

“Great, now Shredder has a bunch _more_ mutant soldiers,” Raph groused.  “Just what we needed.”  

“Not as many as there could be,” his sensei said.

Splinter retreated to the dojo as Donnie walked away with a vial of Phoenix’s blood.  He was tired, tired of keeping the children from fighting, tired from the fight they had just returned from, tired of thinking of what ifs and what weres.  He was tired of thinking period.  He sank down into zazen, closing his amber eyes and taking a deep breath, listening to it closely.  Thoughts tried to intrude upon him, but he let them drift, and they easily slid off of his consciousness.  They were the chatter of monkey mind, the incessant speaking of his mind’s doubts and fears that floated only on the surface.  Those were not the thoughts he had to worry about.  It was the deeper ones, the ones that were hidden, pushed down in the psyche that now held sway over him, if they managed to surface. He did not get to listen to his breath long before he felt Leo come up behind him.

“Sensei,” he said gently.  “That’s why you looked through your scrolls, isn’t it?  Because she healed you, and it prompted you to look for The Healing Hands.”  The turtle dropped to his knees across from his father.

“Yes,” Splinter replied, opening his eyes.   There were times when he was not so pleased to have such an astute son.

“That’s what you kept thinking about when we were staying in the pizza parlor,” Leo went on.

“Yes,” he repeated.  “My experience gave me a great deal to think about.”  Hopefully, that would shut the young turtle up.

Of course, it didn’t.  “Was it a good experience?” Leo’s voice was soft, the voice of his father’s confident.  The one that wanted to be his friend.

Splinter regarded his son, whom, when was at his wits end, and _needed_ someone to talk to, was the one he went to.  His heart always stretched out to the boy when he spoke in such a fashion, mature and adult, despite his age.  The loneliness that struck him so much, and more so now that the boys were above ground and had friends of their own, was strong in his gut. That was one of things he could not recall from his time spent in The Burrow…being lonely.  Separate, but The Phoenix and her children had done their best to try to include him. 

But there were so many things that he could not discuss with Leonardo.  Already, he had too much on his shoulders, and he would not understand, could not understand all the intricacies of a life already lived, of two lives already lived twisting and turning into each other, only to once again part ways. 

 _Nothing is this life happens by chance,_ his father had told him on more than one occasion.  He had told himself the same thing, over and over again, all through his life as a mutant in the sewers.  It had kept him going when all had he wanted to do was lay down and die.

“For what it was,” Splinter answered.  “We were in cramped quarters and hiding from the Kraang.”

“So, you got to know them very well,” Leo surmised.

The rat nodded.  How could he explain that when one knows you are in danger, and neither party wants to be, that one plays pretend for as long as possible, to extend the experience of safety?  How could he explain the subtle dance that he and Phoenix had participated in?  How could the boy even start to understand something like that?

“In a way,” Splinter explained.  “I observed them working together and fighting together.”  He sighed, his ears drooping slightly.  “They helped me.”

“And now we’ll help her,” Leo finished what he thought his master would say, nodding sagely.

Splinter mimicked the motion, only much slower.  “Yes,” he agreed.  “We will help her.”

#####

“Wow!” Mikey looked around The Back Up Burrow, his pale blue eyes wide.  “This place is huge!”

“Where is the natural light coming from?” April asked, looking up at what resembled a window.

“Mirrors,” Aries replied curtly.  “They reflect the light from some of the grates.”

“You made those?” April’s voice was filled with awe.

“Yeah,” he mumbled.  “We had no electricity during the invasion.”  He scowled at her.  “It’s dark in the sewers.”

“By just collecting mirrors from up above?” April pressed, examining one of the holes where the light emerged.

“Yeah,” Aries said again, his voice having a disgusted quality to it.  “It’s not hard.”

“You guys are building walls and stuff,” Mikey noted, thumping one of the unfinished ones with his hand.  “Totally cool!”

Aries rolled his eyes, “People gotta have rooms,” he snapped.  “I lived long enough not having a room, thank you.”

“Which one is gonna be yours?” he asked, running to another half-constructed space.  “This one, huh?  Wow, it’s, like five times the size of my room!”

“I guess if you’ve got the space,” April said with wide eyes.  “Anyhow, where’s your mom’s stuff?”

Aries stopped for a moment, looking around as if he’d forgotten something.  “In boxes,” his voice was quiet and sad.

“What are you all living in boxes for?” Mikey said.  “I see chests of drawers all the time for the taking.  They just need a little TLC to be good again.”

Aries knelt in front of a box, dingy and stained on the outside, and pried open the lid.  “We had to move,” he said.  “The Foot Clan found out where we lived.”

“You haven’t always lived in the sewers?” April asked, coming up beside him. 

The ram looked up at her like she was nuts.  “Since when to sheep and bears live in the sewers?”

“Well,” April blushed, pursing her lips together.  “I thought…since you were mutants and you were down here…”

“You thought wrong!” Aries snapped.  He began tugging items out of the box, and stuffing them in April arms.  “Make yourself useful.”

April huffed.

Aries looked at her annoyedly and huffed hard enough that her bangs fluttered in his breath.

Mikey came up, just in time to see a set of bra and panties be thrust in to April’s pile.  “Wow, those are nice, way nicer than yours we washed when you were living with us, April.”

“It’s rude to compare people’s underwear.”  Aries stood up, pointing to a pile of bags.  “Get one of those for us to put it in.”

“It is?” he asked.  He didn’t wait for answer as Mikey happily obliged, seemingly oblivious to the ram’s attitude. 

“This is pretty nice underclothes,” April said skeptically.  “Where did you get it.”

Aries shook his head, brows drawn down in a V, the vertical slits of his pupils large in the low light but filled with anger.  “I don’t know where she got it.  Probably some rich ladies house during the Invasion.”  She got herself a new wardrobe.”

April blushed again, looking away.  With Phoenix being a human, she had momentarily forgotten that most of what mutants came by was throwaways. Of course, if the older woman had anything nice, it would have been found by chance or stolen.  Having lived during the invasion herself, she’d not been above stealing during it, so they could stay alive in the pizza parlor.  Shoot, living in the pizza parlor was akin to stealing.  They ate everything in poor Antonio’s store.  Though Mikey had assured them Antonio deserved it, having been turned into a living pizza supervillain.  Goodness, that turtle had an imagination.

“Donnie will help your mother get better,” she said gently.  “If any can, he can.”

The ram regarded her for a moment, the scowl on his face softening.  “Splinter owes her,” he said lethally.

Mikey returned with the bag.  “He told us about you guys,” the orange banded turtle said.  “Didn’t he April?”

She nodded.  “He kept saying how kind all of you were to him.”

Looking momentarily guilty, Aries shrugged.  “It wasn’t my call,” he said, heading toward the makeshift bathroom, the only fully completed room in the space.

In it was a toilet with the plumbing still in full view, obviously leading to one of the active sewage outlets.  He grabbed a toothbrush, of which there four, all of them looking relatively new.  A tiny toothpaste tube followed.

“Dude,” Mikey said, offended.  “We’ve got toothpaste.  How do you think we keep all of our teeth nice and shiny?”  He smiled wide, displaying his pearly whites.

“I thought turtles didn’t have teeth,” Aries raised an eyebrow, taking the toothpaste out of the bag.

April smiled, at least they seemed to be making progress with the surly mutant.

“I have all my teeth,” Mikey said, his eyes closed with self-importance.  “Just because other turtles lose all of theirs doesn’t mean I have.”

Aries rolled his eyes, then looked about, as if in search of something else.  April noticed he didn’t seem to find it, his face turned sad, then he sighed.  “I guess that’s it.  Arcos and I will get a bed, later.”

“She doesn’t have a bed here?” April asked.

Aries shook his head.  “We hadn’t had time to bring it down…” His voice shook, sounding very much like the sheep that he was.

###

“You just gonna stand there and stare at me?” Arcos asked the red banded turtle across from him.

“Yeah,” Raph replied, his arms crossed his chest.  “You gonna stand there and stare at her?”  He motioned to the prostrate form of the woman on the table.

“Yeah,” Arcos growled.  “The whole time she’s here.”

“We’re trying to help you people,” Raph told him, scowling. He knew they were jerks.  That didn’t surprise him.  He was surprised at how neither of her boys seemed willing to leave her alone in the Lair with them.  Would they be acting differently if Medusa were there?  He repressed a shiver.  He was glad the serpent was there, she gave him the willies.  Not because she threw him in a dumpster.  No, that wasn’t it at all.  Why couldn’t the dumb bear figure out they were trying to help?  Donnie was the best there was, no matter what Arcos thought.  “And you’re being jackasses.”

“Heehaw,” the bear replied.

**A/N:  The contest is still on, for three more chapters!  Everyone who comments or gives kudos is entered into a drawing for a paperback copy of Season 1 of The Other Side of the City!**


	150. Chapter 150

“Saki,” she heard her brother say.  The rain was soaking her to his skin, the uniform stuck and wet to the point that her socks in his boots were wet.  The air was cold about her in the dark, except for her back, here her brother lay against it, each holding the other up. 

“Hhhnnn?” she asked.  She didn’t like the cold, but she seemed very stoic about it, in a way she never recalled doing before.

“Look at your watch,” he said.

She did so, the skin of her hand more tan that she’d ever seen it.  It was strikingly familiar, but at the same foreign, too big to be hers.  “It’s 2:33,” she said.

“Two weeks until our enlistment is up.”

She chuckled, a deep sound, moving both of their bodies.  “For me.  You have two weeks and one minute.”

“Not anymore,” her brother replied.

“They will not let us go home at 2 in the morning, Yoshi,” she said.

“But they can’t make us fight after 2 in the morning,” he replied.

There was a moment of silence as she listened to the night sounds.  She wasn’t sure what she was listening for. She shifted her rifle from one shoulder the other, making Yoshi rearrange himself against her back.

“I am looking forward to getting back home,” Yoshi said.

“Me, too, brother,” she replied.  Her family was waiting for her at home; mother, father, their entire household.  And Tang Shen. She felt her heart warm with affection.  She was back home, too.

But, she didn’t want Tang Shen.  She wanted Stephane.  He was in the French lab at college, waiting for her shift to be over, so they could go to that cheap little diner, because it was the only thing he could afford with his little work study salary.  All of her money went to gymnastics, the last years that she would be able to compete, and she wanted to make the most of it.

Then a pain shot through her insides.  She was strapped to a table, with whirring blades lowering toward her abdomen, and brains with tentacles floating in strange spaceships all around her.

****

There was an uneasy truce in the Lair.  In the days since their rescue, neither of Phoenix’s boys wanted to leave, but it obvious neither of them wanted to stay, either.  When Aries had gone to fetch his mother’s things, he’d not brought anything for him and his brother.  That didn’t bother them at first, but on the third day, Aries said, “I have to brush my teeth.”

“What is it with you and your teeth?” Arcos asked.

“I have good teeth,” Aries lifted his lips to show the large, sheepish dentature he was so proud of.  “I want to keep it that way.”

Arcos waved a hand at him.  “Go brush your teeth then.  And bring back mine while you’re at it.”

“I went last time,” the ram argued.  “You go.”

“We went over this before,” the bear growled.

“That was then, this is now!” Aries huffed, his nostrils flaring.

“Enough!” Splinter shouted, his cane crashing to the ground, glad he wasn’t close enough to either to smell their breath.

It had been like this several times a day for the four day since they’d arrive, and it was driving everyone crazy.

Donatello had emerged from his lab two days before, his notebook in his hands, scribbles that Splinter had no way of deciphering written all over it.  “I think I’ve figured out what’s wrong with her.”

“What?” Leo asked.

“She lost a lot of blood,” Donnie explained.

“Really?” Aries snapped.

The purple banded turtle shook his head.  “It’s not like that,” he explained.  “It wasn’t from her wound.  She’s not dehydrated at all.  In fact, she shouldn’t be as hydrated as she is with the amount of blood she lost.”   He turned to Splinter, his chocolate colored eyes filled with concern.  “I think they took her blood while she was there, and replaced it with saline.”

“What’s that mean?” Arcos asked.

“Did you not hear him?” his brother asked.  “It means they took her blood and replaced it with saline!”

“It means,” Donnie said in a voice that broached not interruptions, “that they took too much blood from her at one time.  But instead of giving her blood back, they have her a solution so she wouldn’t be dehydrated.”

“Why would they do that?” Mikey asked.

“So she’d stay alive longer,” Donnie said gravely.  “But,” he brightened.  “Her blood cells are multiplying at almost 16 times the rate of normal red blood cells.  It shouldn’t be too long before her blood count is back up to par!”

“Then we can go back home,” Aries said with relief.

“If that is all that is wrong,” Splinter said firmly.

“I still don’t know if she has any internal damage,” Donnie said, his brow ridges drawn together.   “She doesn’t have a fever, in fact she’s cold.  Too cold.”

“She’s always run cold,” Arcos said.  “She’s the first one to get cold.”

“She’s got no fur, Arcos,” Aries said annoyedly.

“She’s got clothes!” the bear retorted.

“Enough!” Splinter shouted again.  “If you cannot be quiet, then leave!”

Both young men glowered at him, but remained silent.

A few days later, Leo approached him as he sat in the dojo.  “Sensei?” he asked gently.

Splinter had sat in meditation for hours, his mind whirring, unable to become still, despite even the most basic of meditation techniques.  Chanting did not work.

His mind drifted to Arcos’ words when they were washing her, that she’d fell off a five story building before finding him and caring for him.  When Mikey asked them about it, they’d told a rather incredible story of their fight against the Kraang.  Their home had been destroyed, and after trying to find their friends, they’d been driven underground.  Phoenix had rolled off of the top of an apartment building, and while the story the ram and bear told indicated she’d had her fall broken in several places, she’d still not only been alive when she’d hit the road, but had been able to get up and escape to the sewers with them.  A short time after, she’d found him, and they’d carried him back to the Burrow.

“We hadn’t even cleaned the place yet,” Aries said in a surly voice.  “And she cleaned your sensei off, using buckets of water we had to heat over a fire.”

“How did she do that after being hurt that badly?” Mikey had asked.

“She gasped and winced a lot,” Arcos replied.

“It was damn annoying,” Aries muttered.

Listening to his breath did not work.

He remembered her body sitting next to his, in her own version of zazen, something yogic in flavor.  He could still hear her breath moving in and out.  The Burrow smelled of the sewer, like The Lair, but with it was the scent of oil and herbs, the woman sitting near him, but not touching him.  Her breath was faster than his, and the two of them tried to find a synchronistic rhythm.  That was normal, he’d told himself at the time.  But he knew the two of them were trying too hard, one would catch up with the other and then the pattern would be broken, like new students learning a harder technique.

Praying did not work.

The cadence of her words when she read to him, like a prayer, passages out of the Iliad and Odyssey, of the Aeneid, in Latin, Greek, and English, floated through his mind.  Her reading voice was lovely, and she’d told him that his was also.  The look in her eyes when he read out loud was like a child reaching for chocolate, popping it in their mouth, and reveling in the taste.  Had his eyes looked the same when she’d read to him?

Listening to the space between the words of the prayer or chant didn’t work. 

He recalled her body heat when she lay next to him on her thin, homemade mat.  Each one matched the size of the person who slept on it, her was shorter and thinner than the one they’d made for him.  Both, however, were pieced together fabric in a type of quilt, lined on the bottom with crocheted plastic bags, to make a slight cushion and provide air flow beneath the cloth to warm the sleeper.  When he was running feverish, her body next to his had been a cool balm, and when he was cold, she’d warmed the side that faced her.  She had chosen to sleep next to him, her charge, rather than in the warm pile with her three children across the room.

Looking at the photo of he and Tang Shen did not work.

 _“What does Tang Shen mean?”_ she had asked him, hearing a foreign name in his head and not knowing what it meant.  He had been angry, he remembered, that she had taken something from him that was not hers to take.  But guilt quickly replaced it, when he remembered that it was he who had made the space for the words to enter her mind.

“Yes, Leonardo?” Splinter asked his waiting son, bracing himself for another round of questions about his short residency with Phoenix and her family.

“We have to come up with some sort of plan to get Medusa back.  And Karai.”

Before Splinter could reply, the Lair was split with the sound of screaming.

He and Leo ran from the dojo, to Donnie’s lab where Phoenix’s bed had been set up near his medical equipment.  Both Aries and Arcos were backing away from the woman who screeched and writhed on the makeshift hospital cot.  Next to it, April lay in a heap, her head in her hands, Donnie at her side.

“What’s happening?” he demanded, his brows drawn together.

“I don’t know,” Donnie cried.  “She stared screaming, and then April collapsed!”

“I didn’t touch her!” Aries cried, his hands up in the air.

“Nobody said you did!” Arcos growled.

“Make her stop!” Mikey crooned.

Aries drew a fist back.

“Don’t hit her!” Donnie jumped up, holding his hands out.  “I don’t know how she doesn’t have brain damage with the way you two handle her!”

“We handle her fine,” Aries replied, his voice shaking.

“Donnie, it’s her gut,” April struggled to get up.  “I feel like someone just threw a boulder right at my stomach.”

“She does have internal damage!” the purple banded turtle said.  “I knew it!”  He put one of his large hands on the woman’s abdomen.  “But she isn’t feverish.”

Her hand, small and pale, shot out from under the thin blankets that covered her, pushing the side and revealing the thin nightshirt wore.  Her green eyes opened suddenly, seeming to glow with an inner heat that her body didn’t feel.  Grabbing Donnie’s wrist, she snarled, “You won’t cut me open again, you disgusting squid!”

“Oh, Donnie,” April put her hand on Donnie’s arm, her face filled with compassion.  “I think she’s talking about—“

“—The Kraang,” Mikey finished.  He looked to Splinter, his eyes going to Leo who stood beside his father, before returning to the rat.  “They did something to her?”

“They experimented on her when she was younger,” Arcos growled.  “Of course they did something to her.”

“She hasn’t had this nightmare in, like, ten years, though,” Aries bahhed.

“She’s done this before?” Raph asked, lingering at the doorway.  

Both of her sons nodded.  “It happened a lot more when were young.”  Arcos looked down at his mother, who seemed to have frozen, her eyes unblinkingly staring at Donnie, her hand gripping his wrist.  “But she hasn’t had one in years.”

Her eyes slowly closed, her fingers loosening on Donnie’s wrist, and her hand falling on her stomach.

“A feverdream with no fever,” Splinter said quietly. 

“I’d feel better with her on some sort of antibiotic,” Donnie said, putting his hand back down by his side.  “But I don’t have any.  And no way to get any.”

“You mean a general antibiotic?” Aries asked.

Donnie looked up at him as if he’d started speaking another language.  “Yes,” he said slowly.

“We have tons,” the ram replied.

“What?” Raph asked, stepping forward.  “How do you have tons of antibiotics?”

“Garlic,” Aries told him, his ears flapping excitedly.  “We use garlic.  We’ve used it for years, with everyone.”

“Garlic?” Leonardo asked incredulously.  “Garlic isn’t going to kill an infection.”

 “Actually,” Donnie said, looking at Aries with an appreciative look, “during World War II, the general population used it because the war effort took all of the antibiotics that were being manufactured.  How much garlic do you have?”

“We don’t have any,” Arcos said, glaring at Aries.  “We’ve got next to nothing.”

“There’s sure to be some at the warehouse,” Aries countered.  “And it’s all over the city.  She has gardens all over,” he motioned to his unconscious mother.  “I would bet everyone has a type of garlic in it.”

“There are different types of garlic?” Mikey asked, his face lighting up.  “Do they taste different.”

“Yes, actually, they do,” Aries said quietly, as if he had never thought about it before.

“How do you know all this about garlic?” the bear asked his brother.

Aries glared at him, his golden eyes annoyed.  “Don’t you listen when she talks to people?”

Splinter remembered her with the Inleters.  Indeed, if the person was listening, they would have gleaned a great deal of medical information from her.  He recalled she explained to her patient everything she was doing, chattering as she worked.  The rat a sudden surge of respect for the ram that had not been there before.

“Go,” he said, waving him away.  “Gather some.”

To Splinter’s surprise, Aries grabbed Arcos’ arm and dragged him with him.  “Come on,” he said.  “We’ll back in a few hours.”

“A few hours?” Arcos asked.  “If there isn’t any at the warehouse, it might take us more than a day to gather some.”

“Then we’ll be back tomorrow at the latest,” Aries inched them toward the door.  “Then she can get better, and we can go home.”

As the two large mutants left, April came up to him.  “Master Splinter,” she said.  “Just before she screamed, I felt something.”  
  
He raised his eyebrows.

“It was like the raindrops I was telling you about before.  But, it was like they were from different clouds.”  At the confused look on his face, she scrunched her mouth up in thought.  “It…it’s like two different temperatures, so you know the water drops are coming from two different places.  Then the big hail stone got me in the gut.”  She rubbed her stomach and smiled.

“Perhaps it will become more clear after she wakes up,” Donnie offered.

“Oh, and sensei,” she glanced at Donnie, then back to Splinter.  Both looked slightly uncomfortable.  She held something in her hand, and offered it to him.  “I was going through Phoenix’s pockets in her pants to wash her clothes,” she said.  “I found this in her back pocket.”

He took it, and it appeared to be a piece of paper, folded in to quarters.  But when he opened it, he felt his stomach sink.

Staring up at him, through the creases that created a cross in the picture, were the smiling faces of his four sons.  It was the photo he had with him when he left the lair during the Invasion.

**A/N: Only two more chapters until the drawing.  Be sure to leave kudos or a comment to be in the running for a paperback copy of The Other Side of the City: Season 1!**


	151. Chapter 151

Splinter retreated to the dojo, the picture of his four sons in his hands.  The Phoenix had this in her pocket, and from the look of it, it had been there a while.  It was wrinkled and worn, the edges of the folds were beginning to come apart.  She must have found it when she’d found him in the sewers, months ago.  Why had she kept from him when he’d stayed with her in The Burrow?  And why had she kept it after he’d left.  How long had she been carrying it?  Why was she carrying it at all?

Not an hour after Arcos and Aries had left, the quiet of the Lair was disrupted with the boys beginning to argue.  He took a deep breath, trying to block their banter out.  Once again, Raphael was pushing going after The Shredder, and Leonardo and Mikey were goading him about his temper.  _Donatello must not be in the room,_ he mused, _or else, he too, would be egging Raphael on._   Again, he sighed.

His boys arguing was nothing new, they had argued all of their lives, since before they were able to talk, even.  Shoving matches would ensue over little things, as they do with all children.  He would break up their fighting, try to instruct them on how to share.  But over the years, he had disengaged himself.  _They have to learn to get along on their own,_ he thought.  _I cannot always mediate._   So when their bickering began, he always came to the dojo, either to meditate or to practice.

Today, he chose to practice.  He had an excess of nervous energy.  He was not immune to the tension that had resided in The Lair since their rescue of The Phoenix, and working off that strain in a moving meditation killed two birds with one stone.  It quieted his mind, and toned his body.

The quietude of his mind was disturbed by a loud crash and the deep, soft voice of Leatherhead calling out, “Turtles!”

As he finished his kata, he listened.

“Slash and Rockwell have been captured by Tiger Claw,” Leatherhead said, his voice panicky.

“Again?” Mikey asked exasperatedly.  “We just rescued them!”

“Tiger Claw said ‘They could be of use to him’,” Leatherhead continued.

“One guess who _him_ is,” Splinter could see Raphael rolling his eyes in his mind.

“Yeah,” Mikey agreed, confidently.  “Him.  Who does the thing.”  His voice began to sound unsure as he spoke each word.  “I got no idea who you’re taking about.”  Splinter tried not to sigh.  The boy was good at so many things, innuendo was not one of them.

“Shredder!” Raph said, exasperation now his voice.

Another crash ensued as Splinter finished the kata, and as he left the dojo and entered the pit, he saw the reason for it.

“Aww,” Raph groaned.  “Not Pigeon Pete.  Anyone, but Pigeon Pete.”  _I am going to have to talk to him about his manners,_ Splinter noted for the umpteenth time.

As Pete bounced about The Lair, Splinter kept a reign on his own manners.

“Got any bread?” the pigeon mutant asked.

“We got better than bread,” Mikey assured him.  _At least I don’t have to talk to him about his manners,_ Splinter thought fondly.  “We got pizza crust, brah!”

As the pigeon began to chow down on the crust, knocking Mikey to the ground in his enthusiasm to get to it, Raph groaned once again.  “Why couldn’t Tiger Claw take him instead?”

It was Leo, as usual, who reminded Splinter’s confrontational son of his manners, at last.  “Hey,” he said.  “I’m not crazy about Slash, but the Mutanimals are our friends, and we’re going to rescue them.”  He sounded like a leader, his voice so assured.

The bravado was broken, however, when he looked at Splinter, his brow ridges raised in asking permission.

“Go,” he said curtly.  “Save your friends.”

The lot of them ran out, jumping the turn styles, all bluster and energy, finally having a way to vent the tension that had been brewing in their home since The Phoenix’s arrival.  Then, he was alone in the sewer, the only person in the Lair the woman he had recently rescued.

He walked to Donnie’s lab, where she lay on the hospital cot and frowned.  She was as white as a ghost,  if she had risen from the table, floated above the floor, and been transparent, he would not have been surprised.  Her healing powers must have been most powerful on herself, he mused, remembering her care of The Inleters.  She had treated them conventionally, every single patient, not with her power.  He remembered the movement of her energy, always interweaving with the person she was addressing, and wondered if she was using both her power and her medical knowledge.  She had, at times, used only her power on him, and then at others, only the herbs available to her.

He reached out and took ahold of the edge of the blanket, pulling it away from her shoulder.  The strap of the nightgown she wore did little to cover up the pink scar that his own claws had given her.  His gut twisted with self-disgust, and he fought the hatred that crept up in moments of weakness when he looked in the mirror.   His hands, both recognizable from fifteen years of studying them, yet strange, ended in a parody of nails.  They could not be his, with their dusky rose color, fading to carnation pink.  They were too long, too angular, too pale.  They were missing a finger.  These were not the hands of a man, but the hands of a monster.

He worked diligently to keep the animal he was now melded with buried deep within, caged like the rat that it was.  Rats were wily creatures, however, it skulked out at the most times great emotion.  He laid his fingers on each of the furrows in her skin, as if doing so would negate that he was the one who had done this thing.  But they fit perfect, like a custom-made glove, the long claws scraping her skin ever so slightly as he moved. Had he been under passionate duress when he had done this to her? He could not remember.

She had caused so much trouble in the past weeks.  He felt resentment welling up inside of him.  People had been traipsing through his home.  The tension could be cut with a knife at times.  Jack Kurtzman had brought information upon information about all of them, small details that Splinter did not want to know, that he didn’t need to know.  She had disrupted everything. 

But alongside of it was pleasure, twisting and convoluting his emotions into a conglomeration of confusion.  Despite the disturbance she and her brood had caused and the revulsion he felt with himself when he looked down at her, he was still happy to see her.

******

She would have her revenge.  She wasn’t entirely sure why she would have it, but The Phoenix would have it against Hamato Yoshi, because he had ruined everything that was good in her life.

He had been the best loved their parent’s sons, more loved than her.  He had pranced and preened for attention all of their shared lives, taking what victories and praise that was rightfully hers from her, like a peacock steals the show from a raven.  He had stolen her most beloved thing, Tang Shen, from her, and then, again, he had stolen her beloved daughter, Karai, to the mindlessness of a snake.  She doubted that slip of a healer of mutants, a disgusting creature in her own right, like a wraith with honey hair and jade eyes, could help her precious child.  If she did not, then she would have revenge on her, too.

She would flay the woman’s skin from her bones, leaving her only a set of muscles hanging from her wrists from the ceiling.  Then she would take her skin and tan it.  He would make straps from the leather, and use it to tie up each one of her monstrous children before she dumped them into the New York ocean.  Her skull would adorn the front of his entry hall, a reminder to all who crossed him what would happen if they stood in his way.

He would feed her to her own serpent daughter, as payment for Karai being stolen from her.  He would watch in glee as the great boa constrictor engulfed the little woman, consumed by her own progeny, the natural predator of the rat of which she was supposedly so fond.  It would take up three days for her to die inside the snake mutants belly, as digestive fluids slowly ate away at her flesh and sinew.

He would bleed her dry, taking every drop of alien blood that ran through her veins leaving her nothing more than husk waving in the wind.

And if the rodent racoon was correct, and Splinter came for her before he had used her up, he would capture them both.  While the rat watched, he cut what was left of her into bloody chunks, throw them into the water piece by piece in his throne room, and let the piranha feed on her in a frenzy.  Then he would do the same Hamato Yoshi.

Only, Phoenix didn’t want revenge on anyone.  She recalled wanting vengeance, in the heat of the moment, but not revenge.  Revenge had to be thought out, lingered upon and then meted, cold and shaking.  The venom it produced was the worst kind of poison, the one that blocked out any feelings of goodwill, so that it consumed the one who dallied with it.

That took too much emotional energy away from other things in her life.  It blocked the path for compassion, and kindness mattered.  All of her second life, she knew that kindness mattered, kindness to the homeless, kindness to the lost, kindness to the mutants she helped.  She had been granted a second chance, after being unkind to so many people in her youth, that being kind now mattered a great deal.  She hadn’t deserved the chance that the universe had given her on that hot night twenty years ago. Nor did she deserve the many chances afterward.  Her selfishness at trying to obtain what she wanted, her self-absorption in her fame as a gymnast, and later a poet, her self-serving behavior had hurt so many people around her.  She had paid no attention to anyone around her, unless it suited her in some way.  That she was hurting first didn’t matter.  That someone else had hurt her didn’t matter.  It mattered that she had hurt, and having done so negated any ‘deserving’ she might have earned.

She’d meditated on it for years, she knew it to be true in her very bones.  Even though she’d paid for it through the years of loneliness in raising the kids, the hardships of squatting, it wasn’t enough to earn that second chance.  She had been given that second chance so she could do the opposite of what she’d done with her first chance.  She was to pay attention, to help those who life had cast aside.  That was her task, now.

She didn’t want revenge on any of them.  She knew what it felt like to be alone and have no one love her.

But then, that other her, that wanted revenge for stealing everything from her, knew what having no one loving him felt like too.

**A/N:  Only one more chapter before the drawing (not the story) is over!  Be sure to leave kudos or comment to be put in a drawing for a paperback copy of Season 1 of The Other Side of the City.  All the typos are fixed and the cover art is finished!**


	152. Chapter 152

Splinter was drawn from his meditation in the dojo by the sound of his sons and Mutanimals entering the Lair.  He wasn’t expecting them to be back so soon, and relief washed through him.  Despite the rash of near failures and misses that his family had been experiencing, the boys seemed to have had a smashing success in this mission.  All of them were present, and not a one of the eight of them had a scratch.

Slash collapsed onto a chair, holding his head in his hands.  “I can’t remember,” he said.

“Remember what?” Splinter asked, emerging into the room. 

“How we escaped,” Rockwell said.

“Your escape was very fortuitous,” Splinter said, noting the niggling feeling in the back of his mind.  His ears swiveled a few centimeters, toward Donnie’s lab.  No sounds came from it, The Phoenix was not stirring.  He had to banish his worry of her, if he was unable to concentrate on what was happening around him.  “The Shredder is not easily eluded,” he finished.

Rockwell put his hands on his head.  “They did something to us,” the chimp said.  Splinter examined both Rockwell and Slash’s faces.  While they both looked unharmed, they wore masks of confusion, each blinking slowly as if having just woken up.   “We were being experimented upon by Shredder.”

Splinter’s stomach dropped.  He knew that Oroku Saki had sunk into something akin to madness.  If not madness outright, then obsession had stolen him of whatever compassion had once been in his soul.  He had no desire to know what kind of experiments The Shredder might subject a human to, much less two mutants.  “Let me get you some water,” he said, turning away.

Suddenly, pain burst through his head.  The force of the blow sent him spinning sideways, a deep roar filling his ears.  He hit the concrete of the sewer floor hip first, his jaw hitting so hard, that he was unconscious before he stopped skidding across the floor.

When he came to his senses, he heard Leo cry, “They’ve got Raph!”  _No,_ he thought.  _They have Raphael._   What would they want with him?  What would Shredder want with him?  During the rescue of the Mutanimals and the Children of the Phoenix, he’d been terrified that one, or all, of his sons would become prisoners.  It was his fear whenever they encountered anyone from the Foot Clan.  His only fear that was greater was that they would be killed during a ‘patrol’.

Then, Michelangelo was at his side, bending down, concern filling his baby blue eyes.  “Sensei,” he said, “Donnie and I will stay with you.”

“I will survive,” Splinter managed to get out, though he had trouble making his lungs take in enough air to speak.  “You must save your brother.”  When Michelangelo did not move, he snapped, “Go!”

He watched the boys leave, jumping the turnstiles with ease, running after Slash and Rockwell.

Trying to lift himself up from the floor, he groaned.  Pain stabbed in his jaw where he’d been struck, his neck muscles bunching.  As he got to his knees, he gasped at a spasm attacking his back, twisting its way around to his hip where he’d hit the concrete.   That was going to take a while to heal.

No, Phoenix was here.  His heart dropped as he stood up.  He would have to wait, to heal as he always did.  He put his hand to his back as another spasm gripped his muscles.

He had a healer in the next room, and she was utterly useless.

#####

Both Aries and Arcos carried bags made from old t-shirts that had been sewn at the bottom seam and had the arms cut out to make handles.  It was a trick they’d learned many years ago, and helped to make them feel less economically deprived than using found plastic grocery bags.  Before their capture, Arcos had been surprised when his brother had shown up with a stack of the jersey shirts and began constructing the bags.  The rams tiny, even stitches rivalled anything done by a sewing machine and soon they had a small stack of them, some of which they were using at that moment.  Each were filled with wild garlic, half of which had the greens nibbled off by Aries as he picked them.  The sheep now had a serious case of garlic breath, and was breathing heavily in Arcos’ direction with every chance he got.

“Man, you need to find some anise or something,” Arcos waved his paw in front of his nose, “I can’t smell anything but you and these bags.”

“Garlic is better than the sewer,” the ram replied.

“Amen to that,” Arcos nodded

“Praying is probably a good thing to do,” the accented voice of Fishface drifted from behind them, “because soon you’ll be in Heaven, boys.”

“Seriously?” Arcos turned around, baring his teeth.

Next to Fishface, who held a knife nonchalantly, stood next to Rahzar, leaning against a wall cooly.  The skeletal dog mutant was looking at his fingers, as if they held something of great interest.  “Oh, we’re very serious,” he said, pushing himself off of the wall. 

“I have had a very bad few weeks,” Aries said slowly, dropping the bag of garlic, his nostrils flaring.  “I do not have time for you people, unless you’re giving my sister back to me.”

“Nah,” Rahzar replied, lacing his fingers and pushing them out in front of him.  The knuckles all cracked, loud enough that Arcos’ ears twitched.  “She’s safe and sound in her cage.”  He began to undulate from side to side, “All twitchy and hissy, like normal.”

Aries lowered his head, snorting.

“Oh, the little lamb is going to market?” Fishface crooned, pointing at Aries with his knife.

“This little lamb is gonna have fish for dinner,” he said, scraping his foot on the ground and running toward the fish mutant.

At the same time, Arcos drew his sledgehammer, giving it a swing in front of him casually. 

Rahzar laughed.  “You’re not your sister, little bear.”

“I don’t have to be my sister to tan your hide,” he replied, running at the skeletal dog, throwing back his sledgehammer.  He brought it down hard where Rahzar was standing, but the dog mutant was no longer there.  Arcos felt a bony foot kick him in the ribs, sending him sprawling forward.

With is head lowered, Aries stomped toward Fishface.  The fish mutant twirled on his robotic legs, ending in an airborne kick.  His flat, metal foot collided with the ram’s head, right in between the horns, with a loud thud.  Aries fell this knees, while Fishface fell to the side, the force of his stop sending him careening to the right.  The ram blinked his eyes rapidly, shaking his head with a moan. 

Fishface tumbled head over heels, regaining his footing after several twists that ended him farther down the road.   “Your head isn’t so hard as that,” he said.  With his knife in his sharpened, poisoned teeth, he began to twirl on his hands, an intricate dance made to intimidate the dazed ram.

Arcos breathed in heavily, his lungs didn’t seem to want to work.  He rolled out of the way, avoiding a punch from Rahzar.  The move left him winded, the previous kick still making his insides quiver.

“We keep Medusa’s terrarium a cool 50 degrees,” Rahzar laughed, walking slowly toward the bear.  “Keeps her calm and docile.”  He hunched as he walked, his yellow eyes glowing.  “I was going to let her go hungry for a year, after feeding her that bunny,” he continued, “but Master Shredder thinks that a combination of positive and negative reinforcement is the best way to train an animal.”

Arcos glanced up, his lungs finally filling up with air.  The scent of rotted flesh was strong, tinged with the musk of dog.  He squinted his brown eyes, heat rising in his chest.

“When she’s a bad girl,” Rahzar said, his gravelly voice low, “she gets the temperature lowered and doused with cold water.”  He chuckled at the nasty look Arcos gave him.  “When she’s a good girl, we warm her up, and feed her the prisoners we’re finished with.”

Arcos let out a roar, swinging his hammer as he stood up.

Aries’ vision was blurry, he had never suffered from such a knock on the head in his life.  He wasn’t sure if he was shaking his great noggin or if his brains were simply shaking inside of it.  However, it was hard to deny the large pink form that was dancing toward him.

Just as Fishface approached, Aries swung his axe, the flat of the blade hitting the fish mutant right in the torso.  A sickening squishing sound came from him, before he hit the pavement, skidding into a building.

“For someone who doesn’t have legs,” Aries said, standing up on unsteady feet, “you sure do use them a lot.”

Arcos’ hammer hit only air when he swung.  As Rahzar danced out of the way, he laughed.  “Maybe I’ll train her to play fetch.”

The bear roared again.  Using the momentum from his previous swing, he spun around, the head of his hammer hitting the dog mutant in the gut.  Rahzar went flying as if a string was attached to his waist, into the wall of the opposite building.  He fell, unceremoniously, on top of Fishface.

“I’ll teach you to fetch, you mongrel,” Arcos growled, raising his hammer.

“Another time,” the dog mutant snarled back, helping Fishface to his feet.  “We have other things to do.” 

Arcos ran toward them, but instead of staying to fight, the two of them went separate directions, and faster than he would have thought possible, they were both gone.

Aries stumbled up beside him, “Medusa’s still alive.”

Arcos nodded slowly.  “Looks that way.”

Holding his hand to his head, Aries muttered, “I think that’s gonna leave a mark.”

Arcos turned to his brother.  “No,” he said in his grizzly voice.  “Your head is too damned hard for that.”  He draped his arm over the rams’ shoulders.  “Let’s get this garlic back to Mama.”

**A/N  This is the last chapter to get your name put in the contest to win a paperback copy of The Other Side of the City Season 1!  Give a kudos or write a comment for a chance to win.**


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